Sohan Lal and Another vs State of U.P.

Amar Saran, J.—Heard learned Counsel for the Appellants and learned Additional Government Advocate.

It is pointed out that the deceased Smt. Phoolwati has committed suicide as the Appellant Sohan Lal, who was the husband of the deceased, has kept a mistress Saroj, the co-Appellant and they used to harass and beat the deceased.

Admittedly, it is argued that the marriage took place 12 years prior to this incident when the deceased committed suicide by setting herself to fire.

u/s 113A of the Indian Evidence Act the presumption as to abetment of suicide by a married woman only applies when the marriage has taken place 7 years prior to the date of incident and cruelty as defined u/s 498A, I.P.C. has been practised. As the present incident took place 12 years after the marriage, hence the said presumption could not apply. Moreover, there is no evidence or allegation even of abetment as defined u/s 107, I.P.C.

In Ramesh Kumar Vs. State of Chhattisgarh, , it has been held in paragraph 12 that before drawing the presumption that a woman may be coerced to commit suicide by the husband or in-laws, it must be shown that suicide has been committed, such suicide has been committed within a period of seven years from the date of her marriage and her husband or his relatives, who are charged had subjected her to cruelty. Only on the existence of the aforesaid circumstances, the Court may presume that such suicide had been abetted by her husband or by such relatives of her husband. It was also pointed out that presumption was not mandatory, it was only permissive as the expression ''may presume'' had been used.

It was also observed in the aforesaid decision that for saying that an accused has abetted an offence as defined u/s 107, Indian Penal Code, it needed to be shown that the accused has instigated any person to do that thing or engaged with one or more other persons in any conspiracy for the doing of that thing, if an act or illegal omission takes place in pursuance of that conspiracy, and in order to the doing of that thing or intentionally has aided, by any act or illegal omission, the doing of that thing.

Furthermore, in paragraph 20 of the said decision it was mentioned that to satisfy the requirement of instigation though it was not necessary that mention be made of the actual words used, but the circumstances should necessarily be suggestive of the instigation. Simply from a word uttered in a fit of anger or emotion without intending the consequences to actually follow, it cannot said to be an instigation.

The case of State of West Bengal Vs. Orilal Jaiswal and another, was cited with approval in Ramesh Kumar (supra), where the Apex Court cautioned that the Courts should be extremely careful in assessing the facts and circumstances of each case and the evidence adduced in the trial for the purpose of finding whether cruelty meted out to the victim had in fact induced her to end ones life by committing suicide. A distinction has to be made of cases when a person is hypersensitive to ordinary petulance, discord and differences in domestic life quite common to the society to which the victim belonged and such petulance, discord and differences were not expected to induce a similarly circumstanced individual in a given society to commit suicide, the conscience of the Court should not be satisfied for basing a finding that the accused charged of abetting the offence of suicide should be found guilty.

The same view was also taken in the case of Hans Raj v. State of Haryana AIR 2004 SC 2790: 2004 (3) ACR 2286 .

Furthermore, the Appellants have been awarded a sentence of five years R.I. u/s 306, I.P.C. and it is argued that unless the bail is granted the appeal is likely to become infructuous as normally the appeal will be heard after twenty years. The Appellant has also been in jail since 12.12.2007.

In this view of the matter without making any comment on the merits of the case, let the Appellants Sohan Lal and Saroj, convicted and sentenced in S.T. No. 691 of 2006, be released on bail on their furnishing a personal bond with two sureties each in the like amount to the satisfaction of the Court concerned.