HONOUR-BASED SUICIDES AND FORCED SUICIDES IN INDIA: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE LEGAL REGIME AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION

Abstract

Honour-based suicides and forced suicides remain a serious yet insufficiently explored issue within India's socio-legal landscape, resulting in significant loss of life and profound social consequence. This paper critically evaluates the legal framework regulating suicide in India and assesses its effectiveness in addressing suicides occurring within the broader context of honour-based abuse. While considerable academic attention has been devoted to the links between honour-based abuse and practices such as honour killing, forced marriage and female genital mutilation, comparatively little focus has been placed on suicide as a distinct outcome of honour-based coercion and entrenched patriarchal norm. The paper distinguishes two analytically separate forms of suicide arising within honour-oriented patriarchal settings. The first, termed honour-based suicide, describes situations in which individuals internalise societal stigma and familial expectation, ultimately taking their own lives under intense moral and social pressure without direct physical compulsion. The second, described as forced suicide, involves circumstances in which persistent intimidation, threat or violence effectively drives the victim to end their life, functioning in substance as a disguised form of homicide. While both phenomena originate within structures of honour-based abuse, the distinction between them is doctrinally significant for accurately determining criminal responsibility. The paper argues that the current legal framework, centred on the offence of abetment of suicide under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the decriminalisation approach adopted through the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, does not adequately capture the complex realities of honour-based and forced suicide, and it advances concrete proposals for legal reform aimed at strengthening recognition, investigation and prosecution of these deaths.