New Delhi: Mimicking Western culture, the youths of the country are moving from one relationship to another that lead to disillusionment and suicide due to “frustration”, the Allahabad High Court has said.
The youths — under the influence of social media, movies, and TV — are unable to decide the course of their life, leading them to land up in the company of wrong persons, it further said, granting bail to a man facing abetment charges in his former lover’s suicide case.
In its observations last week, the single bench of the high court further noted that the victim had multiple relationships with a “number of boys,” including the accused, despite opposition from her family.
Her incompatibility as well as family’s resistance to the affairs must have led the victim to end her life, Justice Siddharth said, while considering bail petition of Jai Govind, who was accused by the victim’s mother of abetting the suicide.
The judge then granted bail to the accused due to uncertainty about the conclusion of the trial, a one-sided police investigation, and the “essentials” of abetment not being satisfied.
In the case before the court, Govind’s relationship with the victim was unacceptable to her family. This allegedly led her to develop a relationship with another boy, even as the relationship with Govind was “not fully broken”.
According to the FIR based on the complaint of the victim’s mother, in May 2022, her daughter was kidnapped and raped by the accused and another co-accused “for four days”.
She was again abducted the following month, intoxicated, raped, video recorded, and then left in the market, alleges the FIR. The victim is said to have consumed a mosquito repellent and died the next day at a hospital in June last year.
Govind had earlier threatened the victim’s parents and the victim had paid a sum of Rs 1 lakh to him, according to the complainant.
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‘Society in a state of confusion’
“Before parting this court finds that this is one of the many cases coming to the court where the youth in this country are spoiling their lives due to lure of free relationship with the member of the opposite sex aping western culture and not finding any real soulmate in the end…,” the judge said.
Often concerned about factors like caste, monetary status, the society has been unable to accept the choice of spouse by the youths, leading to many of them to commit suicide or enter into further relationships, he said.
“The Indian society is in a state of confusion whether to keep children to adopt the western norms or keep them firmly within the bounds of Indian culture.”
Unaware of the consequences of entering into such relationships, and after denial of their choice, it leads to disillusionment in youths, the judge said, adding that they do not find a way out of such “predicament”.
The high court said that the victim’s case was similar, who changed relationships despite resistance from her family, and later committed suicide.
Popular media has normalised infidelity and multiple affairs which inflames the imagination of the youth but does not fit into the prevailing social norms, the judge said.
Due to these reasons, the judge added, cases such as rape on false pretext of marriage, instigation to commit suicide, murder with estranged friend out of such relationships are regularly being heard in the courtrooms.
From ‘rape’ to ‘abetment’
The court, meanwhile, noted that the initial alleged offences of gang-rape, abduction, intoxication and murder were not found to be correct by the investigating officer. The alleged video was also not recovered, it added.
The offences were then reduced to abetment to suicide, intent to provoke breach of peace, and criminal intimidation, the judge said.
Justice Siddharth said that the ingredients of the offence of abetment cannot be said to be made out in the case, as the victim cannot be said was instigated by Govind.
To prove abetment, the judge said, it must be proved with ‘reasonable necessity’ that the victim was instigated regardless of actual words used.
“Instigation is to goad, urge forward, provoke, incite or encourage to do ‘an act’… The present one is not a case where the accused had by his acts, or omission, or by a continued course of conduct created such circumstances that the deceased was left with no other option except to commit suicide in which case an instigation may have been inferred,” the court observed.
The high court observed that the allegations by the victim were omnibus and it cannot classify as abetment because there are no specific incidents in support of the allegation.
“In the present case, the suicide note reveals that apart from an omnibus grievance against the accused herein, for which according to him. he ought to be punished, there is no reference or disclosure of any specific incident in support thereof,” the court said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)