New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday said the offence of abetment of suicide under the Indian Penal Code should not be invoked mechanically against individuals only to soothe feelings of the distraught family members of the person who has died.

A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and K V Viswanathan said the investigating agencies should be sensitised so that persons were not subjected to the abuse of the process of a totally untenable prosecution.

“Section 306 IPC appears to be casually and too readily resorted to by the police.

While the persons involved in genuine cases where the threshold is met should not be spared, the provision should not be deployed against individuals, only to assuage the immediate feelings of the distraught family of the deceased,” said the bench.

“The conduct of the proposed accused and the deceased,” the court went on, “their interactions and conversations preceding the unfortunate death of the deceased should be approached from a practical point of view and not divorced from day-to-day realities of life.

Hyperboles employed in exchanges should not, without anything more, be glorified as an instigation to commit suicide.” The top court said the trial courts also should exercise “great caution and circumspection” and should not adopt a “play-it-safe syndrome” by mechanically framing charges, even if the investigating agencies in a given case showed utter disregard for the ingredients of Section 306.

The judgment came on a plea filed one Mahendra Awase challenging an order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which declined his prayer to discharge him from the offences punishable under Section 306 of the IPC.