The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that being named in a suicide note is not enough grounds to be charged for abetment, Hindustan Times reported on Wednesday. The court said the charge was particularly invalid if the person who has named someone in a suicide note was “of weak mentality” and if the investigation failed to find the accused guilty.
The court was hearing a case where six people were named in a suicide note. Iqbal Asif Khan, a manager with Xerox India Limited, had allegedly ended his life on March 23, 2011. His suicide note claimed that six people – lawyers AR Madhav Rao, RK Hasija, MP Devnath and Nishant Mishra and firm employees Inder Singh Bisht and Ganesh Prasad Sati – had forced him to take the extreme step.
“The offence of abetment requires ‘mens rea’ (a guilty mind),” the newspaper quoted Justice PB Bajanthri as saying. “There must be intentional aiding or goading the commission of suicide by another. Otherwise, even a casual remark or something said in everyday conversation will be wrongly construed as abetment.”
The court dismissed the case against the accused and said: “For the wrong decision taken by a coward, fool, idiot, a man of weak mentality, a man of frail mentality, another person cannot be blamed as having abetted his committing suicide.”
The bench said police investigation had failed to find any wrongdoing on part of those mentioned in Khan’s suicide note. It also speculated that Khan may have made the “vague” allegations while under severe stress.
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