Examining ‘instigation’ critical in abetment cases | Mumbai News – The Times of India

Mumbai: As suicide cases and their abetment arise in courts at regular intervals, the top court has expounded that judges have the onerous task of examining the element of “instigation” by the alleged accused and to examine each case on its own facts and merit. The Supreme Court has time and again held that what amounts to abetment is the actual instigation.
As provided in the erstwhile Section 107 of Indian Penal Code — for all the existing cases prior to the new BNS — a person can be said to have abetted in doing a thing if he instigates any person to do that thing. “Thus, it is manifest that direct involvement of the person or persons concerned in the commission of the offence of suicide is essential to bring home the offence under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the IPC,” said the Bombay HC division bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Shyam Chandak. In Chitresh Kumar Chopra vs State (Govt of NCT of Delhi), the meaning of the word “instigation”was held as being to “goad,” urge forward, provoke, incite, or encourage to do “an act.” To satisfy the requirement of “instigation,” though, it is not necessary that actual words must be used to that effect or what constitutes “instigation” must necessarily and specifically be suggestive of the consequence, the HC noted. What has to be established, the HC has pointed out, is “reasonable certainty to incite the consequence must be capable of being spelt out.” If a person, by his acts or omissions or by a continued course of conduct, created such circumstances that the deceased was left with no other option except to commit suicide, an “instigation” may have to be inferred, said Justices Dangre and Chandak in the Feb order citing former SC rulings. However, they added, “A word uttered in a fit of anger or emotion without intending the consequences to actually follow, cannot be said to be ‘instigation.'” —Swati Deshpande