E-Paper
Legal action, even ‘false’ FIR, not instigation to suicide: SC
A person cannot be held criminally liable for abetment merely because someone against whom the person initiated legal proceedings subsequently dies by suicide, the Supreme Court has held in a recent order, underlining that every individual has a steadfast right to take recourse to appropriate proceedings under law to protect their rights
A person cannot be held criminally liable for abetment merely because someone against whom the person initiated legal proceedings subsequently dies by suicide, the Supreme Court has held in a recent order, underlining that every individual has a steadfast right to take recourse to appropriate proceedings under law to protect their rights.
A bench of justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi said that setting the criminal justice system in motion cannot, by itself, amount to instigation to commit suicide, as it quashed criminal proceeding against a woman’s parents and brother, who had been accused of abetting the suicide of her husband after she lodged a domestic violence-related first information report (FIR) against him and subsequently sought maintenance.
“Lodging an FIR, even if it is false, against a person, per se, does not amount to instigating that person to commit suicide,” said the bench in its August 18 judgment. It added that if a person initiates legal proceedings to protect their rights, “he cannot be held liable for abetment to commit suicide, if the person against whom proceedings were initiated commits suicide.”
The court also cautioned that while examining whether a prima facie case of abetment has been made out, courts cannot look at a suicide note in isolation but must examine the surrounding circumstances. Merely because a person who is dejected or frustrated ends their life and blames someone in a suicide note would not, by itself, be sufficient to establish a prima facie case of abetment.
The bench said the relevant question was whether the conduct attributed to the accused, viewed in ordinary circumstances, would have driven an “ordinary person”, rather than an “over sensitive person”, to take the drastic step of ending their life.
The case arose from a matrimonial dispute in Gujarat in March 2020. The woman alleged that her husband had assaulted her and the next day after which she left their home with their son, travelled to her parents in Ahmedabad and lodged an FIR against her husband under charges of domestic cruelty and causing hurt.
Later, the deceased’s brother lodged an FIR against the woman’s parents and brother, alleging that they had harassed the deceased, encouraged her to file a “false” case against him and served him a maintenance notice, driving him to suicide.
The woman’s parents and brother moved the Gujarat High Court for quashing of the FIR, but the plea was rejected in September 2025. They then approached the apex court.
Before the Supreme Court, they argued that lodging an FIR and seeking maintenance were lawful remedies and could not amount to abetment merely because the person facing those proceedings subsequently died by suicide. The state placed the deceased’s suicide note before the court.
The Supreme Court examined the note and found that the deceased had addressed it to his relatives, including his elder brother who lodged the FIR, his elder sister, his wife and his parents-in-law. The deceased blamed the appellants for ruining his married life but did not allege that they had committed any act amounting to instigation or harassment of such intensity that he had been left with no option but to end his life.
The bench noted that the suicide note instead indicated that the deceased was highly depressed by the turn of events, particularly his wife leaving the matrimonial home.
Explaining the legal threshold, the court referred to Section 107 of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code (IPC), which defines abetment as instigating a person to do something, engaging in a conspiracy for its commission, or intentionally aiding its commission through an act or illegal omission. It held that the necessary ingredients of abetment were completely absent from both the FIR and the suicide note.
The bench rejected the allegation that the appellants could be held responsible simply because they had allegedly influenced their daughter to initiate proceedings against her husband.
“In matrimonial relationship, often differences arise between husband and wife where they tend to blame each other and institute proceedings against each other,” the court observed, adding that initiation of such proceedings “cannot by itself be taken as an act of instigation to commit suicide”. Whether such proceedings were bona fide or mala fide was ultimately for the courts to determine.
The bench also noted that the appellants were admittedly living separately from the deceased and therefore, could not be said to have exercised such an “overbearing influence” over him as to have instigated or driven him to suicide.
It also noted that the possibility that the deceased’s own guilt complex may have contributed to his decision to end his life could not be ruled out, while making clear that it was not deciding the actual reason for his suicide.
The bench then set aside the September 2025 order of the high court and quashed the FIR registered against the appellants as well as all consequential proceedings.
