New Delhi, Aug. 24 -- A person cannot be held criminally liable for abetment of suicide merely because someone against whom the person initiated legal proceedings subsequently dies by suicide, the Supreme Court has held, 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 proceedings 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 FIR against him and subsequently sought maintenance. "Lodging an FIR, even if it is false, against a person, per se, does not amount to instigating that person to commit suicide," said the bench said in its August 18 judgment. It added that if a person initiates legal proceedings to protect their rights, "he cannot be held liable for abetment to commit suicide, if the person against whom proceedings were initiated commits suicide." The Supreme Court also cautioned that while examining whether a prima facie case of abetment has been made out, courts cannot look at a suicide note in isolation but must examine the surrounding circumstances. Merely because a person who is dejected or frustrated ends their life and blames someone in a suicide note would not, by itself, be sufficient to establish a prima facie case of abetment. The case arose from a matrimonial dispute in Gujarat in March 2020. The woman alleged that her husband had assaulted her and the next day after which she left their home with their son, travelled to her parents in Ahmedabad and lodged an FIR against her husband under charges of domestic cruelty and causing hurt. Later, the deceased's brother lodged an FIR against the woman's parents and brother, alleging that they had harassed the deceased, encouraged her to file a "false" case against him. P4...