Chennai: Making it clear that attempting suicide is an offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Madras High Court has observed that some people do it to grab the attention of authorities. The court said that people should approach the court rather than resorting to such practices which are not in public interest.
The court said this while hearing a case about a man who attempted to consume poison after officials reportedly ignored his pleas to remove an alleged encroachment on his land.
The case pertains to Velankanni in Tamil Nadu where G Rajkumar, a local resident, was fighting for the removal of an encroachment on his land. He tried to commit suicide by consuming a poisonous substance reportedly as the officials had not take action on his complaint. Following this, he approached the high court.
When the matter came up for hearing, the bench, comprising of Justices N Kirubakaran and Krishnan Ramasamy, said it would like to know whether any case of attempt to suicide had been filed against the petitioner.
“It is also seen from a number of news reports that people are resorting this kind of arm-twisting methods like attempting suicide by setting themselves afire or by consuming poison, so as to grab the attention of the authorities,” the bench said.
“In many cases they achieve what they want. These kinds of methods have to be discouraged as they would go against public interest and many people would try to follow such methods for everything,” the bench observed.
The bench further said that the public is always free to approach the court to get their relief.
The petitioner submitted that he had made a representation to the Chief Minister’s Cell but since there was no response, so he came to the Secretariat in Chennai.
After he was not permitted entry, he consumed a poisonous substance but he recovered after being hospitalized.
Again, he made a representation to which there was no action.
Hence, the present petition for a direction to remove the encroachment was filed, the petitioner said.
