Attempted suicide may not be a crime

The Union Cabinet on Thursday will consider a bill to remove stigma from treatment of people suffering from mental ailments, decriminalising suicide and prohibiting electro-convulsive therapy.

Updated on: Jan 29, 2014, 23:38:41 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Union Cabinet on Thursday will consider a bill to remove stigma from treatment of people suffering from mental ailments, decriminalising suicide and prohibiting electro-convulsive therapy.

A person attempting suicide should be presumed to be suffering from mental illness at that time and will not be punished under the Indian Penal Code, the revised draft bill incorporating a slew of recommendations made by a Parliamentary Committee says.

With the health ministry accepting many of the committee’s recommendation the original bill has been completely overhauled. The new version of the Mental Healthcare Bill has been submitted for Cabinet’s consideration and if approved would be introduced for passage in the resumed winter session of Parliament stating from February 5, a senior ministry official said.

A big change from the original bill is that the proposed legislation accepts complete rights of a person suffering from mental illness including decisions to be taken on his or her treatment. The bill also provides for more rights to mental health patients as envisaged in the original bill including decision on their treatment.

The new version also provides for right of a person to seek treatment for mental illness at any government run hospitals and makes it mandatory for insurance companies to provide health insurance to persons suffering from mental illness like to any other person. “Mental illness cannot be a reason for denying insurance cover,” a health ministry official said.

Apart from doctors, the bill also makes it mandatory for magistrates and police officers to ensure that a person suffering from mental illness has right to get free legal service.

The bill also strengthens the regulatory framework for ensuring that such patients get proper treatment in hospitals and are able to live life with dignity. The bill also prescribes penalty for in-human behaviour against mental health patients including chaining them or keeping them in confinement. “Their seclusion is banned as per the new draft,” an official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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