Section 309 of IPC
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Subject: Polity
Context:
Increasing suicides in the country bring to limelight section 309 of IPC
Concept:
- Anyone who survives an attempted suicide can be booked under Section 309 IPC, which deals with “Attempt to commit suicide”.
- Contrary to popular perception that it has been repealed, continues to exist in the statute book.
- The Mental Healthcare Act (MHCA), 2017, which came into force in July 2018, has significantly reduced the scope for the use of Section 309 IPC and made the attempt to commit suicide punishable only as an exception.
- Section 115(1) of The MHCA has said person who attempts to commit suicide shall be booked under this, unless proved otherwise, to have severe stress.
- In ‘Gian Kaur vs State of Punjab’, 1996, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of Section 309.
- However, in 2008, the Law Commission in its 210th Report, said that an attempt to suicide needed medical and psychiatric care, and not punishment. In March 2011, the Supreme Court too recommended to Parliament that it should consider the feasibility of deleting the section.