In a case where the victim recorded his own farewell video and named his killers before taking his last breath, the Punjab and Haryana High Court found itself confronting one of criminal law's most unsettling questions, when does a brutal, repeated assault cross the legal threshold into abetment to suicide under Section 108 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and what quantum of intent must the prosecution establish before pre-trial custody can be sustained?
The controversy began on March 16, 2025, when Suresh @ Tinku filed a complaint alleging that his brother Rakesh @ Rinku and he were set upon by the petitioners, Arun @ Annu and Sonu @ Sachin, along with eight to nine other individuals, in an assault apparently orchestrated at the behest of Sonu, the deceased's own brother, over a festering land dispute within the family. When the brothers sought treatment at BK Hospital, Faridabad, the attackers followed them there and struck again. Rakesh, driven to the edge by the relentless targeting, subsequently ended his life by hanging from a tree near Badkhai Lake, but not before recording a video on his mobile phone in which he named the petitioners directly and held them responsible for what was about to happen.
A pendrive carrying this recording was placed before the Court and viewed by the bench. Counsel for the petitioners argued that the ingredients of Section 108 BNS were simply not attracted, the victim, they contended, was a short-tempered individual and a patient of depression, and even accepting the FIR's version at face value, no legally cognisable nexus existed between the assault and the act of suicide. The State and the complainant's counsel pushed back forcefully, arguing that the double assault, including the brazen follow-up attack inside a hospital, had left the victim with no will to live, and that his video testament constituted powerful direct evidence of the accused's culpability.
Justice Manisha Batra's reasoning was clinically precise and jurisprudentially grounded. Drawing on the Supreme Court's authoritative pronouncement in Arnab Manoranjan Goswami vs. State of Maharashtra, the Court held that to attract Section 108 BNS, the provision corresponding to Section 306 IPC, the prosecution must establish not merely that the accused harassed or assaulted the deceased, but that they harboured a specific intention to instigate or actively facilitate the commission of suicide itself. Assault and harassment, however grave, cannot by themselves bridge the legal gap between violence and abetment, the mens rea of direct instigation remains the sine qua non of the offence. Applying this standard to the record before it, the bench found that "the element of mens rea of direct abetment, which is a sine qua non for attracting the offence, does not prima facie emerge from the record," and that only a thorough assessment of evidence at trial could determine whether Section 108 BNS was truly attracted against the petitioners.
Finding no justification for continued pre-trial detention, Justice Batra allowed both petitions and directed the release of Arun @ Annu and Sonu @ Sachin on bail, subject to their furnishing personal and surety bonds to the satisfaction of the trial court, while expressly clarifying that the observations shall carry no bearing whatsoever on the merits of the trial.
Case Title: Arun @ Annu & Ors. vs. State of Haryana
Case No.: CRM-M-60524-2025 (O&M)
Coram: Justice Manisha Batra
Advocate for Petitioner: Adv. Kapil Choudhary, Hardik Bedi, Sonu Chaudhary,, Geeta Choudhary, Aditya Jain, Yatin Mehta, Indu Bala
Advocate for Respondent: Adv. Neeraj Poswal (AAG, Haryana), Pardeep Duhan
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