P. Rathinam v. Union of India - Cornell University

either suicide or suicide attempts, but they specified that to aid, advise or encourage another person to commitsuicide is a felony. In more than 20 other States, there were no penal statutes referring to suicide. [See pp. 16and 17 of Suicidology: Contemporary Developments by E.S. Scheneidman (1976).]108. The latest American position has been mentioned as below at p. 348 of Columbia Law Review, 1986:"Suicide is not a crime under the statutes of any State in the United States. Nor does any State, by statute,make attempting suicide a crime. In twenty-two States and three United States territories, however, assistingsuicide is a crime. If an assistant participates affirmatively in the suicide, for instance by pulling the trigger oradministering a fatal dose of drugs, courts agree that the appropriate charge is murder."Conclusion109. On the basis of what has been held and noted above, we state that Section 309 of the Penal Codedeserves to be effaced from the statute book to humanise our penal laws. It is a cruel and irrational provision,and it may result in punishing a person again (doubly) who has suffered agony and would be undergoingignominy because of his failure to commit suicide. Then an act of suicide cannot be said to be against religion,morality or public policy, and an act of attempted suicide has no baneful effect on society. Further, suicide orattempt to commit it causes no harm to others, because of which State's interference with the personal libertyof the persons concerned is not called for.110. We, therefore, hold that Section 309 violates Article 21, and so, it is void. May it be said that the viewtaken by us would advance not only the cause of humanisation, which is a need of the day, but of globalisationalso, as by effacing Section 309, we would be attuning this part of our criminal law to the global wavelength.430111. The writ petitions stand allowed by declaring Section 309 of the Penal Code as unconstitutional andhence void. The proceedings in GR Case No. 177 of 1984 (State v. Nagbhushan Patnaik) pending in the Courtof Sub-Judge, Gunpur in the District of Koraput, Orissa stands quashed.112. Before parting, we should like to observe that what we have sought to do through this judgment may besaid to be an attempt to "search for the social dynamics of criminal law, the functional theory of sentencingand the therapeutic reach of punitive arts, to catch up with social sciences relevant to criminal justice and tolink up prison jurisprudence with constitutional roots", of which Justice Krishna Iyer has mentioned in hispreface (styled Krishna Iyerishly as 'A Word in Confidence') to his aforementioned book. Whether we havesucceeded or not; and, if so, to what extent is for others to judge.113. 1 desire to place on record (though it would sound unusual to some and may be to many) myappreciation for the assistance I had received from Shri Satish Chandra, Joint Registrar (Library) of the Court,in supplying me promptly very useful and varied materials for preparing this judgment, as and how requiredby me.434P.Rathinam vs Union Of India on 26 April, 1994Indian Kanoon - http://indiankanoon.org/doc/542988/ 24