Abolish law against suicide attempt: Legal experts

Government's move to do away with a colonial penal law that prosecutes a person for a failed suicide bid has evoked sympathetic views from legal experts, who favoured its abolition saying the provision is "archaic and outdated" and has led to no conviction in 156 years.

They supported the move to decriminalise IPC Section 309 (punishment for attempt to commit suicide), saying a person does not take the extreme step unless "something seriously goes wrong in one's life" and such action is taken only when there is "momentary weakness in mental strength".

Senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP KTS Tulsi said, "I entirely support it, and it is desirable" while pointing out that nowadays suicide attempts have become common due to a stressful life.

"This was a criminal offence when suicide was not common among the people...People are taking such steps nowadays as life has become stressful," Tulsi said. "Why to punish a person who is ready to give up his/her life," he asked.

Former Law Minister and senior lawyer Shanti Bhushan went a step further and said, "It is his/her life, and he/she should be allowed to take his/her life", but nobody commits suicide unless "something serious goes wrong in one's life".

The Mental Health Bill 2013, which among other things seeks to decriminalise suicide attempts presuming that a person suffers from mental illness at the time of attempting to kill self unless proved otherwise, was passed in Rajya Sabha during the Monsoon Session earlier this month. When passed, it would amend Section 309 of the IPC which came into being in 1860.

Advocate and Lok Sabha MP Meenakshi Lekhi termed the government's move to bring the bill as "positive and liberal step" and said that the measure provided for rehabilitation of a person, having mental illness and who attempted to suicide, to reduce the risk of recurrence of such incidents.

However, she held a different view on whether the right to life also included the right to die, saying the life guaranteed under the Constitution does not include the right to die as "any violent act which ends a life amounts to murder."

On this count, Tulsi said, "The constitutional right to live with dignity also gives the right to die with dignity".