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.
“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. They then approached the apex 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. It held that the necessary ingredients of abetment were completely absent from both the FIR and the suicide note. Whether such proceedings were bona fide or mala fide was ultimately for the courts to determine.
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, merely. Because the person facing those proceedings subsequently died by suicide, before the Supreme Court, they argued that lodging an FIR and seeking maintenance were lawful remedies and could not amount to abetment merely. The woman’s parents and brother moved the Gujarat High Court for quashing of the FIR, but the plea was rejected in September 2025. 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.
“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”.
The state placed the deceased’s suicide note before the court.
