New Delhi, Aug. 24 -- A person cannot be held criminally liable for abetment merely because someone against whom the person initiated legal proceedings subsequently dies by suicide, the Supreme Court has held in a recent order, underlining that every individual has a steadfast right to take recourse to appropriate proceedings under law to protect their rights.

A bench of justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi said that setting the criminal justice system in motion cannot, by itself, amount to instigation to commit suicide, as it quashed criminal proceeding against a woman's parents and brother, who had been accused of abetting the suicide of her husband after she lodged a domestic violence-related first information report (FIR) against h...