No Contact for Five Months Cannot Be Abetment: Allahabad HC Acquits Husband of Wife's Suicide Charge
The Lucknow Bench set aside convictions under Section 306 and Section 498-A IPC, holding that a five-month gap in contact fatally undermined the instigation charge and that Section 113-A of the Evidence Act cannot be invoked without prior cogent proof of cruelty.
Justice Subhash Vidyarthi, sitting singly at the Allahabad High Court's Lucknow Bench, on 31 July 2026 allowed a criminal appeal filed by Ankur Tandon and acquitted him of all charges, setting aside a conviction and sentence imposed by the Special Judge, Ayurveda Scam/CBI, Lucknow on 21 September 2024. The trial court had convicted Tandon under Section 498-A and Section 306 IPC and Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961, sentencing him to seven years' rigorous imprisonment for abetment of suicide and two years for cruelty. The High Court found that the prosecution had failed to prove dowry harassment beyond reasonable doubt, and that the complete absence of any contact between the husband and the deceased for over five months before her death made a charge of instigation to suicide legally untenable.
The Marriage, the Allegations, and the Suicide
Ankur Tandon and Monika had known each other through work. Their relationship led to marriage on 14 December 2004, with the appellant's mother bringing the formal proposal. The FIR, lodged on 2 October 2010 by Monika's sister, alleged that from two to three months after the marriage, Tandon and his family — his mother Shashi Tandon, younger brother Aman Tandon, and sister-in-law Shweta Tandon — repeatedly harassed Monika for demanding Rs 10 lakh for purchasing a flat. The complainant's father was said to have sold a plot of land jointly held by his two daughters and paid Rs 6 lakh in cash to the appellant, with a balance of Rs 4 lakh remaining unpaid. Monika had left her matrimonial home and was living at her parents' house. She committed suicide by hanging herself in the night of 2 October 2010.
The postmortem report recorded an oblique ligature mark around the neck, with the cause of death stated as asphyxia due to antemortem hanging. The deceased had left two suicide notes, marked Exhibits A-3 and A-4. The first, addressed to her mother, spoke of the appellant's ill-treatment breaking her heart and her loss of will to live. The second, addressed to Tandon, accused him of misbehaviour, of having turned her out, of bringing another woman into his life, and of attempting to win the divorce case through bribery and fabricated records. The note stated that the appellant had compelled her to commit suicide and that his family and friend Abhijeet Trivedi bore responsibility for her death.
A charge-sheet was filed against Tandon alone initially; a supplementary charge-sheet followed against other family members, who were tried separately. The case arose out of Case Crime No. 386 of 2010 registered at Police Station Alambagh, Lucknow, and was tried as Session Trial No. 747 of 2012.
The Competing Versions and Discrepancies in Prosecution Evidence
Three prosecution witnesses — the complainant sister (PW-1), the deceased's father Gulshan Kapoor (PW-2), and her younger brother Sunny Kapoor (PW-3) — testified to dowry harassment and cruelty. A neighbour examined as PW-9 supported the prosecution version.
The High Court identified material inconsistencies. PW-1 admitted in cross-examination that neither of the two suicide notes made any mention of a demand for dowry, and that the deceased had not raised this allegation in any pending litigation. PW-1 also stated that the deceased had stopped living with the appellant since 2008 and that the deceased was not depressed due to separation or the divorce suit. The sale consideration for the plot, said to have been paid to Tandon as dowry, was received entirely in cash and no date of payment was ever disclosed. The deceased's FIR of 20 April 2010 alleged that her father gave Rs 1.5 lakh in instalments deposited into the appellant's bank account, but PW-2 did not repeat this in his testimony. The FIR also contained an allegation that the appellant had caused the deceased's miscarriage by giving her medicine, which no prosecution witness corroborated.
The appellant had filed his own criminal complaint in 2007 before the C.J.M. (Custom), Lucknow, alleging that the deceased threatened to implicate him in a dowry death case and that she used suicide notes as an instrument of extortion. The C.J.M. took cognizance on 6 April 2010 and summoned the deceased for offences under Sections 504 and 506 IPC. The appellant also filed Regular Suit No. 2253 of 2009 for divorce in the Family Court, Lucknow, under Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act, with pleadings alleging mental cruelty by the deceased. The trial court had not properly weighed these documents, the prosecution having neither admitted nor denied them when called upon to do so.
On the dowry payment, the High Court pointed to a telling contradiction: the deceased herself had alleged in the FIR that the extracted amounts were deposited in the appellant's bank account and his mother's account, yet the prosecution simultaneously argued that such amounts were never deposited in bank accounts. The trial court had accepted both positions selectively.
Why the Section 498-A Conviction Could Not Stand
The High Court held that the prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Tandon had harassed the deceased for demanding dowry. The allegation of an Rs 6 lakh cash payment was made without particulars of the plot, the date of the sale deed, or the date of payment. The discrepancies between the FIR version, the statements of PW-1, PW-2, and PW-3, and the contents of the suicide notes were, in the Court's assessment, serious enough to raise reasonable doubt.
The High Court also addressed the legal consequence of the prosecution's own case. Section 3 of the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 penalises not only the taking of dowry but also the giving of it. If the father of the deceased had genuinely paid Rs 6 lakh as dowry, that payment would itself constitute a confessional admission of an offence. The Court noted this anomaly, though it ultimately decided the acquittal on the ground that the allegation had not been proved at all.
Relying on the Supreme Court's decisions in Anand Ramachandra Chougule v. Sidarai Laxman Chougala, (2019) 8 SCC 50, and Vaibhav v. State of Maharashtra, (2025) 8 SCC 315, the Court reiterated the asymmetry in evidentiary burdens: the prosecution must prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, while the accused need only create a doubt based on a preponderance of probabilities. The appellant had filed documentary evidence — complaints, court orders, letters to the police, and bank records — sufficient to establish that serious bilateral disputes predated the FIR by years. That was enough to discharge the accused's burden.
The Section 306 Conviction: The Five-Month Gap as a Legal Bar
The trial court had convicted Tandon under Section 306 IPC even while acquitting him under Section 304-B IPC. The reason given for the Section 304-B acquittal was that the deceased and the appellant had had no contact since 20 April 2010 — the date of the FIR at Mahila Thana — making it impossible to establish harassment “soon before death.” The deceased committed suicide on 2 October 2010, five months and twelve days later.
Justice Vidyarthi found this internal inconsistency fatal to the Section 306 conviction. If the trial court itself had found no contact for over five months, it could not simultaneously hold that the appellant had instigated or incited the deceased to commit suicide.
The Court surveyed the governing Supreme Court precedents on abetment of suicide. From State of W.B. v. Orilal Jaiswal, (1994) 1 SCC 73, it drew the caution against convicting where the victim may have been hypersensitive to ordinary domestic discord. From Ude Singh v. State of Haryana, (2019) 17 SCC 301, it extracted the requirement of a positive, proximate act of instigation — not merely harassment, but conduct that left the deceased with no option but to take her own life, and that act had to be in close proximity to the suicide. From Prakash v. State of Maharashtra, (2026) 6 SCC 251, the Court took the principle that instigation must reveal a clear mens rea to abet, and that the act must be of such intensity and proximity that it pushes the deceased to a position of no choice. From Balaji Jaiswal v. State of Chhattisgarh, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 602, it took the requirement that instigation be in close proximity to the act of suicide to form the necessary nexus.
On the suicide notes, the Court observed that while the deceased blamed Tandon for her suffering, the notes described events that predated her departure from the matrimonial home. The appellant had not been in contact with her in the five months preceding her death, and there was no evidence of any act by him in that period that could be characterised as instigation.
The Presumption Under Section 113-A Could Not Be Invoked
The trial court had invoked Section 113-A of the Evidence Act, which permits a court to presume abetment of suicide by a husband or his relative where the wife commits suicide within seven years of marriage and had been subjected to cruelty. Monika had married in December 2004 and died in October 2010 — within seven years.
The High Court held that Section 113-A is a discretionary, not a mandatory, presumption. Relying on Ram Pyarey v. State of U.P., (2025) 6 SCC 820, and State of H.P. v. Madan Gopal, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 191, the Court emphasised that the presumption can only be raised if there is first some cogent evidence of cruelty and harassment. Having already held that the prosecution failed to prove Section 498-A, there was no predicate for invoking Section 113-A. The Court therefore held that the trial court had erred in proceeding directly to the presumption without establishing the underlying cruelty.
The Court further cited Nipun Aneja v. State of U.P., 2024 SCC OnLine SC 4091, for the proposition that courts err when they look only at the factum of suicide without examining whether the accused's acts amounted to direct and alarming incitement leaving no option but death. That observation, the Court held, squarely applied: the trial court had focused on the broken marriage, the mutual allegations, and the suicide note, without addressing the absence of any proximate act of instigation.
Outcome
The High Court allowed Criminal Appeal No. 3471 of 2024. The judgment and order dated 21 September 2024 of the Special Judge, Ayurveda Scam/CBI, Lucknow in Session Trial No. 747 of 2012, convicting and sentencing Ankur Tandon under Section 498-A and Section 306 IPC and Section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961, was set aside in its entirety. Tandon was acquitted of all charges.
The Court directed that Tandon be released from custody upon furnishing a personal bond and two sureties for appearance before the Supreme Court in the event of a further appeal, in terms of Section 437-A of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The fine amounts already deposited by him are to be refunded. The judgment was declared speaking and reportable.