Giving respite to a woman accused of abetting her husband to suicide, the High Court of Karnataka has quashed the charge sheet filed against her by the police based on the death note “retrieved” from her husband’s laptop by her father-in-law, after hacking the password with the help of a technician.
Justice Rathnakala passed the order while quashing the entire proceedings initiated against Swati Pai, the petitioner, based on the complaint given by her father-in-law Krishnamurthy.
Complaint
The complaint was that the petitioner’s husband Praveen K. committed suicide on June 14, 2014 by hanging in a house, where he was living with his parents, allegedly due to wilful conduct of his wife.
The death note, in which the deceased held his wife responsible, was seized only on June 17, 2014 and the forensic sciences report stated that the laptop was used by somebody before it was seized by the police.
Even after accepting the entire case of the prosecution, including the death note alleged to have been left behind by the deceased, the material on record failed to make a case under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code, the court said.
Also, the court said the “veracity of the death note, which was intercepted before it was seized under mahazar, cannot be accepted as genuine.”
“In the absence of any evidentiary material, it is dangerous to attribute the vicarious liability of the suicide on the accused,” the court observed, while stating that sending her to face trial on such hazy evidence is nothing but abuse of process of law.
The court found that material on record disclosed that the husband was allegedly harassing the wife and she had filed a complaint, and the husband had undertaken before the police not to harass her. Also, the court noticed that the petitioner had filed a plea for divorce on the ground of cruelty. The couple married in 2006 after a courtship.
