The supreme court (SC) has ruled that a man cannot be convicted of abetment if his wife commits suicide after the lapse of a certain time, say three months, of his bringing another ‘wife’ home. He can, however, face the charge of cruelty for causing trauma.
Explaining the relief provided to Amalendu Pal alias Jhantu in an abetment-to-suicide case, SC said on Friday that Pal had brought Anita (his second wife) home to stay with him three months before the day his legally-wedded wife Dipika committed suicide on September 25, 1991.
“If the deceased [Dipika] had been so perturbed by the act of her husband marrying Anita and bringing her to his house and felt impelled to commit suicide, she would have done so on the very day Anita came to stay with her husband, as, naturally, at that point her annoyance or dismay with life would have been at its pinnacle,” a bench of justices Mukundakam Sharma and RM Lodha observed.
“From the period of three months that elapsed between the incidents of the husband bringing Anita to his house and Dipika committing suicide, it can be clearly inferredthat it was not the husband’s act which instigated or provoked Dipika,” the court added.
The couple married in Kolkata in 1977 had two sons. Later, Pal “developed an extra-marital relationship with Jyotsna alias Anita. [When] the relationship became known tohis wife, she objected to such an illegal relationship”.
“He [Pal] sought Dipika’s permission to marry Anita, but she refused. Consequently, the husband started torturing Dipika both physically and mentally,” the court said, quoting from the prosecution plea upheld by a Kolkata trial court and the high court.
The high court awarded Pal eight years for abetting suicide and another three for causing cruelty under sections 306 and 498A, respectively.
SC, however, did not find conclusive evidence to prove that “the husband had, by his acts, instigated or provoked his wife to commit suicide” and gave Pal partial relief.
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