The Supreme Court has held that a man’s extra-marital affair had abetted his wife's suicide.
It held that the husband’s illicit relationship had tipped his wife’s psychological balance and pushed her to take the extreme step just four months after their marriage in May 2002.
The accused, Siddaling, had moved the apex court after the Karnataka High Court upheld his conviction.
A Bench of Justices R. Banumathi and Vineet Saran said that the man did not deserve any leniency as his continuation of the affair, disregarding the agony it cost his wife, was a direct act leading to her death. The apex court agreed with the High Court finding that the man’s conduct amounted to cruelty and harassment.
Advocate Joseph Aristotle, for the State, argued that abetment involves a mental process of instigating or inducing a person to take his or her own life.
Psychological imbalance
“The appellant’s illicit relation with another woman would have definitely created the psychological imbalance to the deceased, which led her to take the extreme step of committing suicide... It cannot be said that the appellant’s act of having illicit relationship with another woman would not have affected to negate the ingredients of Sections 306 IPC (abetment of suicide),” Justice Banumathi, who authored the judgment for the Bench, observed.