Orissa High Court: In an application under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, seeking quashment of the order taking cognizance of offence punishable under Section 306 of the Penal Code, 1860 (IPC), Sibo Sankar Mishra, J. allowed the petition and quashed the Trial Court’s cognizance order and all the consequential proceedings arising thereto.
Factual Matrix
The petitioner was in an arrange marriage set up with the deceased. The petitioner insisted upon postponing the marriage ceremony by two years. The deceased upon knowing that the petitioner was not happy with their engagement, brought this fact to the notice of her parents and family members. However, parents and family members from both the side insisted upon the petitioner as well as on the deceased that they should talk to each other and expected that over the period of time things will fall in place. It was alleged by the mother of the deceased that the petitioner was not showing any interest in the marriage preparations. Later, the petitioner’s father called the deceased and informed that their marriage might not materialised as the petitioner was not willing to get married and further expressed his sorrow for that. Subsequently, a long telephonic conversation between the petitioner and the deceased took place which made her very volatile and mentally unstable and after sometime, the deceased was found to have committed suicide at 8 A.M. by hanging herself with ceiling fan. A First Information Report was registered under Section 306 of IPC. The Trial Court took cognizance of offence punishable under Section 306 of IPC. The petitioner challenged the aforesaid order of cognizance by invoking jurisdiction of the Court under Section 482 of the CrPC.
Analysis and Decision
The Court noted that the petitioner was reluctant to enter into marital relationship with the deceased from the very beginning and was postponing the marriage and that the initial reluctancy showed by the petitioner led to engagement of the deceased with some other boy from Nagpur, however, unfortunately, the said engagement could not be converted into marital relationship and the engagement was broken by the deceased’s family. The Court said that the breaking of earlier marriage proposal with another boy was also a contributing factor to push the deceased to take her own life. The Court added that the deceased fell victim to petitioner’s reluctance to not get married and the desperation of parents of both the sides to get her married to the petitioner.
The Court on perusal of the statement of the complainant mother and the sister of the deceased recorded under Section 161 of the CrPC said that nowhere it was mentioned that deceased told about the heated arguments that took place between the petitioner and the deceased on the phone call between 3.30 A.M. and 4.00 A.M. rather she stated that the deceased fell to sleep at about 4 A.M. with heavy heart. The Court said that the said statement was contrary to two complaints lodged by the complainant i.e. one which led to registering of unnatural death case and the other which became the foundation for lodging of FIR. Therefore, in the absence of exact conversations that had taken place between the deceased and the petitioner on that fateful night, the Court said that the crucial element of offence punishable under Section 306 of the IPC i.e. mens rea to commit offence of abatement of suicide on the part of the accused, which requires commission of direct or active act by the accused which led deceased to commit suicide seeing no other option and such act must be intended to push the victim to a point of no return and she commits suicide, were clearly missing in the present case.
Further, the Court said that, such repeated breaking of engagement of a girl belonging to Marwari community, which is a very small community in Odisha, would definitely cause severe mental stress. Therefore, the Court said that, as it was admitted by the prosecution that breaking of the engagement with the boy from Nagpur also contributed to the mental stress and agony of the deceased, the petitioner cannot be blamed for the same. Thus, the Court stated that the act of entering into the engagement with the deceased by the petitioner with reluctancy to marry her alone cannot be made a penal offence, much less under Section 306 of the IPC. The Court observed that reluctance to give irrevocable commitment for life-time and to take responsibility cannot culminate into mens rea to commit a criminal offence.
[Dr. Priyank Tapuria v. State of Odisha, 2024 SCC OnLine Ori 1679, Decided on: 20-06-2024]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the petitioner: Senior Advocate Samir Kumar Mishra
For the respondent: Addl. Standing Counsel P.K. Maharaj and Advocate Himanshu Sekhar Mishra
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