Rewari, November 22
In a rare case of abetment of suicide, the onus of which has squarely fallen on the in-laws of the deceased, Arvind Yadav, son of Bharat Singh Yadav, resident of Gurawara village, Mr Deepak Gupta, Additional Sessions Judge, Rewari, has sentenced Laxmi Narain Yadav, father-in-law of the deceased, Rajesh Yadav, brother-in-law, and Indra Yadav, sister-in-law, each to imprisonment for a period of five years and also imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 on each one of the three convicts. Further, in case of default of payment of fine, the convicts shall have to undergo an additional imprisonment for six months each.

Simultaneously, the judge has also ordered that the period spent by any of the accused in custody would be set off.

Holding all the three accused guilty of the charge of abetment of suicide, the judge also observed that the accused created such circumstances and atmosphere for the deceased that he committed suicide in order to save the honour of his family, as he did not want to face the day when his family members would be implicated in a false dowry case as was quite apparent from his suicide note.

However, soon after the death of Arvind Yadav, his wife Manju Yadav, chose to lodge an FIR on March 25, 2002, at the Behror police station of Alwar district of Rajasthan, on charges of subjecting her to cruelty and criminal breach of trust under Sections 498-A and 406 of the IPC against the family members, including five women relatives of her deceased husband. The case was still pending in a court there.

Regarding the said action on the part of Manju Yadav, the judge further observed that it clearly appeared to be an afterthought, purportedly to save the family members from this case (of abetment of suicide) and also purportedly to probabilise their defences.

According to the prosecution, Arvind Yadav was married to Manju Yadav, daughter of Laxmi Narain Yadav, resident of Behror town of Alwar district of Rajasthan, on November 7, 2000.

Initially, Manju was accorded a warm and affectionate welcome by Arvind as well as other members of the family. But soon cracks began to appear with Manju’s frequent as well as prolonged sojourns at her parental house at Behror being frowned upon by Arvind Yadav and others at Gurawara.

Gradually things came to such a pass that Arvind’s in-laws started to make false allegations against them regarding demand of dowry and maltreatment of Manju, just to extract their pound of flesh over the matter of Manju’s prolonged halts at Behror.

They went a step further in September 2001, when they virtually brought to Gurawara a panchayat in which they not only levelled false allegations against Arvind Yadav and other members of the family regarding demand of dowry, but Rajesh Yadav, son of Laxmi Narain Yadav and brother-in-law of Arvind Yadav, slapped his jeeja before the entire panchayat, which dispersed after the offender felt sorry for their behaviour.

However, things did not stop at that and Rajesh Yadav and her married sister Indra Yadav, continued to issue threats on telephone to Arvind Yadav.

Eventually, all this made life highly tense and miserable for Arvind Yadav, who committed suicide by consuming sulphas tablets at Gurawara on February 23, 2002. He was rushed to the civil hospital, Rewari, where he died half-an-hour after admission in the hospital.

The post-mortem examination of the victim was conducted on February 24, 2002, by Dr T.C. Tanwar, who reserved his opinion about the cause of death till receiving the report of the chemical examiner of the Forensic State Laboratory, Madhuban, to which the viscera and blood of the deceased had been sent for chemical examination. Later, after going through the report of the chemical examiner, Dr T.C. Tanwar opined that cause of death was poisoning.

In the meantime, when on March 1, 2002, Bharat Singh Yadav and other members of the family went to Arvind Yadav’s room to sprinkle ‘Gangajal’ to purify it, they found a seven-page suicide note on the bed of the deceased, which was immediately handed over to the police for necessary action.

The suicide note stated that the trio, Laxmi Narain Yadav, father-in-law, Rajesh Yadav, brother-in-law, and Indra Yadav, sister-in-law, had tortured him (Arvind Yadav) to such an extent that he was committing suicide to save the honour of his family.

Ultimately, on March 27, 2002, on the basis of a complaint, lodged by Bharat Singh Yadav, father of Arvind Yadav, the police registered a case of abetment of suicide under Sections 306, 34 of the IPC, following which the accused Laxmi Narain Yadav, Rajesh Yadav and Indra Yadav were arrested.

Consequently, the challan was presented before the area magistrate, who after making compliance of provisions of Section 207 of the Cr. P.C., committed the case to Sessions vide his commitment order dated July 20, 2002.