Cruel Law

Under Indian Penal Code, attempt to commit suicide (S. 309) has been made an offence and the punishment prescribed for the same is one year simple imprisonment or fine or both. Two questions arise in this connection. Firstly, can an attempt to commit suicide rightly be treated as an offence and secondly, if it can be treated as an offence could the punishment prescribed have any deterrent effect at all? Or any effect at all? No doubt, tendency to commit suicide is increasing now-a-days. But we should look at the reasons behind it and not only to the consequences of the suicide on the society. Why a person commits suicide? This question cannot be answered satisfactorily in a straightforward and direct way. It is a complex pattern of circumstances that compels a person to commit suicide and various factors have to be considered in this respect. The most common causes for which persons commit suicide are longstanding incurable illnesses, marital incompatibility, failure of love affairs at the threshold of youth, poverty, mental disorders. These causes have necessarily a concern with sociology and psychology. A person amidst of such circumstances, in which he finds himself helpless and as a result having mental imbalance, always has a tendency to commit suicide. So the solution of the problem of preventing suicide is a matter of consideration for sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists rather than criminal law. In many countries attempt to commit suicide is not made an offence. In India also, it would be desirable if the legislators look at the problem of preventing suicide from sociological and psychological point of view rather than criminal point of view. A person attempting to commit suicide is always desperate person, he needs sympathetic approach from society and the society must not consider him as an offender. Secondly, about the punishment for this offence. Can the punishment in this case have any deterrent effect? A person who has decided firmly to commit suicide can never be prevented by deterrent threat of punishment from achieving his aim. Expecting that one year imprisonment would deter a person in committing suicide will be to remain in fool’s paradise. A person who has shown readiness to embrace death can never be deterred by any punishment. Has the punishment reformative value? Not at all. Are you going to reform a person by keeping in prison who is not offender at all, but he himself being a victim of desperate circumstances?

Crimes are acts which produce evil effects to some one else. If this criterion is applied, attempt to commit suicide cannot be treated as a crime. Over one’s body and life, the individual is sovereign. The suicide-prone persons are frustrated persons; prosecuting them for their attempt to commit suicide would be ‘persecution’ and not ‘prosecution’.

If a person has no duties to perform to others, when he is terminally ill, decides to end his life and relieve himself from the pain and suffering of living and relieve others from the burden of looking after him, why should not he be allowed to do so? A person cannot be forced to live life to his disliking. The Law Commission of India in its 42nd Report had recommended repeal of Section 309 of the I.P.C. on the ground that this penal provision is harsh and unjustifiable. The Supreme Court in P. Rathinam v. Union of India, (A.I.R. 1994 SC 1844) had rightly held that S. 309 of I.P.C. is a cruel and irrational provision violative of Art. 21 of the Constitution and should be effaced from the statute book to humanise penal law. Though this decision stands overruled by the case of Gian Kaur v. State of Punjab, (A.I.R. 1996 SC 1257), the repeal of Section 309 of I.P.C which is the need of the hour, will virtually nullify the decision of Gian Kaur.

Those who want to live, let them live; those who want to die, let them die peacefully!