Demanding Loan Repayment Not Abetment To Suicide: Bombay High Court

Demanding back money from a borrower does not amount to abetment to suicide, the Bombay High Court has held, granting relief to six accused in a schoolteacher suicide case. It must be an intentional act that instigates a person to take his own life to invoke Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with abetment to suicide, the court observed.

Amit More, a lender, and five others faced abetment charges after Dilip Mande ended his life in Maharashtra's Kolhapur over alleged harassment by loan recovery agents. Setting aside the charge sheet filed against them, the court has clarified that demanding the return of one's own money does not amount to abetment to suicide by itself.

"The pure and simple act of demand or follow up with the creditor for return or repayment of loan cannot by any stretch of imagination be termed as an act of abetment," said a bench of Justice Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale.

The bench also observed that there was no willful instigation or any conspiracy that would have led the person to die by suicide.

"The requisite intention...as would be required to make out a case under section 306 of the IPC to instigate the deceased to commit suicide cannot be inferred from the allegations in the FIR," the court added.

Mande, a teacher by profession, had borrowed money from the lenders named in the case. In 2022, his family lodged a complaint that the lenders had been constantly harassing him.

Due to this harassment, he allegedly consumed poison and died. Based on the complaint by his family, Kolhapur Police registered a case against More and five others for abetment to suicide.

The criminal proceedings have been quashed following the court order.

Inputs by Ruttik Ganakwar