The Telangana High Court recently quashed a criminal petition filed against a city builder who was accused of abetment to suicide of his construction partner and cheating, based on the lack of a “live proximate link” between the accused’s actions and the death. The court also relied on the prosecution’s failure to prove fraudulent intent from the inception of the business transaction.
The judgment, delivered by Justice Juvvadi Sridevi on August 1, emphasised the necessity of a “live proximate link” between the alleged instigation and the act of suicide. The court observed that the suicide note, discovered a week and a half after the death, contained no evidence of “direct or live proximate act of instigation, intentional aid, or active involvement” by the accused.
The case stemmed from a business dispute between the petitioner, Nandyala Narendar Reddy, and his construction partner B Lakshmana Rao, who allegedly died by suicide in 2022. The prosecution’s case was built on a “suicide note” found eleven days after Rao’s death, which accused Reddy of financial deception and refusing to register Rao’s share of flats.
The judgment pointed to certain circumstantial inconsistencies, such as the family’s initial belief that Rao’s death was due to a cardiac arrest and the subsequent cremation without an autopsy, which cast doubt on the case’s very foundation.
“Significantly, the so-called suicide note does not contain any direct or live proximate act of instigation, intentional aid, or active involvement on the part of the petitioner-accused that could be construed as abetment within the meaning of Section 107 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), so as to attract the offence under Section 306 (of the) IPC,” the judgment said.
Drawing upon a Supreme Court precedent, the court reiterated that “mere allegations of harassment, discord, or strained relations, in the absence of a specific, proximate, and overt act of incitement or instigation, are legally insufficient to bring home the charge of abetment”. In the absence of any such “cogent and live proximate evidence”, the court found that the foundational ingredients to attract the offence under Section 306 (of the) IPC are clearly lacking.
Regarding the cheating charge under Section 420 of the IPC, the court differentiated between a criminal offence and a mere contractual dispute and found that the prosecution failed to establish fraudulent intent at the inception of the business transaction. The ruling reaffirmed the legal distinction that “mere breach of contract or failure to fulfill a promise, in the absence of such initial fraudulent intent, does not constitute an offence” under Section 420 of the IPC.
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Highlighting it as a major procedural failure in the police investigation, the court noted the investigating agency’s inexplicable omission to interview a crucial witness, Gandem Ranga Rao, the site supervisor who was privy to the business dealings. This failure was deemed a “serious lapse” and “fatal to the case of the prosecution.”
The court concluded that compelling the petitioner to endure a trial would be a “sheer abuse of the process of law,” in the absence of any cogent and legally admissible material establishing ingredients of the alleged offences” under sections 306 and 420 of the IPC and consequently dismissed the criminal proceedings.
