The Madras High Court Bench here has set aside the conviction and seven years rigorous imprisonment imposed on a 68-year-old in an abetment to suicide case after he underwent incarceration for over seven months due to denial of bail pending adjudication of appeal proceedings.
Allowing his criminal appeal within minutes after taking up the case for final hearing, Justice S. Nagamuthu held that there were absolutely no materials in the case to convict the elderly man whose daughter-in-law had committed suicide after he blamed her for his grand daughter’s elopement.
The judge said that in a similar case, the Supreme Court had observed: “Even if we accept that the appellant did tell the accused to go and die, that itself would not amount to instigation... It is common knowledge that words uttered in a quarrel or in a spur of the moment cannot be taken to be uttered with mens rea.”
He pointed out that in the instant case, the appellant, P. Karuppan alias Nadupaiyan, of Palaviduthi in Karur district had traced his grand daughter with great difficulty after she eloped with a local youth for the first time. Therefore, he had scolded his daughter-in-law for letting the girl elope for the second time.
“Certainly, the deceased would have been depressed over this incident. Being the eldest member of the family, quite naturally, the accused would have reprimanded the deceased for having been indifferent towards her daughter without keeping a close watch on her movements.
“In the light of the above facts and circumstances, the words uttered by the deceased ‘to go and die’ cannot be given a literal meaning to impute mens rea... Words may mean differently in different places and different situations… Therefore, it is essential to analyse the context in which they were spoken,” the judge said.
He also pointed out that in the present case, the prosecution had relied upon as many as three dying declarations to prove the charge of abetment to suicide levelled against the appellant but the contents of each one of those documents were in contradiction with the other two.
While the deceased had accused the appellant of assaulting her with his footwear in one of the dying declarations, she had accused him of merely scolding her in the other declaration. Only in the third declaration the victim had accused him of having asked her to die.
He underwent incarceration for over seven months due to denial of bail
Allowing his criminal appeal within minutes after taking up the case for final hearing, Justice S. Nagamuthu held that there were absolutely no materials in the case to convict the elderly man whose daughter-in-law had committed suicide after he blamed her for his grand daughter’s elopement.
The judge said that in a similar case, the Supreme Court had observed: “Even if we accept that the appellant did tell the accused to go and die, that itself would not amount to instigation... It is common knowledge that words uttered in a quarrel or in a spur of the moment cannot be taken to be uttered with mens rea.”
He pointed out that in the instant case, the appellant, P. Karuppan alias Nadupaiyan, of Palaviduthi in Karur district had traced his grand daughter with great difficulty after she eloped with a local youth for the first time. Therefore, he had scolded his daughter-in-law for letting the girl elope for the second time.
“Certainly, the deceased would have been depressed over this incident. Being the eldest member of the family, quite naturally, the accused would have reprimanded the deceased for having been indifferent towards her daughter without keeping a close watch on her movements.
“In the light of the above facts and circumstances, the words uttered by the deceased ‘to go and die’ cannot be given a literal meaning to impute mens rea... Words may mean differently in different places and different situations… Therefore, it is essential to analyse the context in which they were spoken,” the judge said.
He also pointed out that in the present case, the prosecution had relied upon as many as three dying declarations to prove the charge of abetment to suicide levelled against the appellant but the contents of each one of those documents were in contradiction with the other two.
While the deceased had accused the appellant of assaulting her with his footwear in one of the dying declarations, she had accused him of merely scolding her in the other declaration. Only in the third declaration the victim had accused him of having asked her to die.
He underwent incarceration for over seven months due to denial of bail
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