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Superior Not Guilty If Employee Commits Suicide Due to Heavy Workload, Rules SC

Team SoOLEGAL 27 Jun 2018 10:38am

Superior Not Guilty If Employee Commits Suicide Due to Heavy Workload, Rules SC

Superiors cannot be held guilty of abetment “if an employee, depressed due to a heavy workload at the office, commits suicide”, the Supreme Court has said in a decision while rejecting the argument of the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay HC.

The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay HC has held a senior officer culpable of abetting the suicide of one Kishor Parashar, who worked in the Aurangabad office of the deputy director of education in Maharashtra government.

After Parashar’s suicide in 2017, his wife filed a complaint alleging that her husband’s senior officer abetted the suicide. In her complaint Parashar’s wife said that the superior used to assign too much work that required her husband to work till late evening.

Following the police complaint, the superior officer filed a plea in the Bombay HC seeking to quash the FIR.

However, his plea was declined by the HC saying that, “The facts indicate that there was no direct abetment and the applicants cannot have any intention that the deceased should commit suicide. Even when the accused persons have no such intention, if they create a situation causing mental tension so as to drive the person to commit suicide, they can be said to be instigating the accused to commit suicide.”

The officer then moved the SC against the HC’s decision.

A bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit found the HC’s logic in proving the superior official guilty on the charge of abetting suicide untenable.

The top court further said that the superior officer could not be assumed to have a criminal bent of mind merely because of assigning a load of work to an employee.

The judgment was authored by Justice Lalit, who said, “It is true that if a situation is created deliberately so as to drive a person to commit suicide, there would be room for attracting Section 306 of the IPC (abetment to suicide). However, the facts on record in the present case are inadequate and insufficient (to reach that conclusion).”

The court then quashed the FIR against the superior officer.



Tagged: Supreme Court   Abetting Suicide   Section 306   Bombay HC Aurangabad Bench  
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