BSF personnel granted bail in his son's suicide case

The Delhi high court has allowed the bail plea of a former BSF personnel, charged with abetment of suicide of his son, saying that his remarriage could not be held as a reason for the boy taking his own life.

Justice SN Dhingra dismissed the police's plea, which opposed the bail on the ground that the decision of the accused Hanuman Singh, 51, to marry for the second time was the reason behind the suicide of his eldest son Jasbeer Singh in 2008.

"There can be several reasons for committing suicide and weaker tolerance power is one of them. There has to be a very strong connect between the act of committing suicide and the man goading the victim to do it," the judge observed.

"If we go by your logic, I will have to charge the entire Delhi police with abetting Jasbeer's suicide because his suicide note also revealed that you (the department) had failed to take action in his complaints against his father," the court said.

The court, however, directed Singh to give half the money he got from the BSF after expulsion as ex-gratia for the survival of his son's family. It also asked him to furnish a bail bond of Rs25,000 with a surety of the same amount.

"Jasbeer was not a child. He should have worked and maintained his mother. You cannot send your father behind bars just because he remarried. There is a legal recourse available and he should have availed them," the judge said.

The court, however, made it clear that the observation made by it would not be taken into account while deciding the case in trial court.

Jasbeer had set himself ablaze outside the BSF headquarters on June 12, 2008, leaving a suicide note in which he blamed Singh father for committing suicide.

Singh was later arrested under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC.