‘Matrimonial dispute is not suicide abetment’: Railways employee gets bail

A marriage that had fallen hopelessly apart, a young father who was desperate not to lose custody of his minor son, and a mediation hearing in Delhi which was just days away – this was the backdrop to the tragedy that unfolded in Gandhinagar in July last year.

A 32-year-old accountant who had worked in Bengaluru before moving to Gujarat and his five-year-old son were found hanging from a ceiling fan in the home of the dead man’s father. It was alleged that the man had murdered the child before killing himself.

Six months later, in January this year, a case of abetment of suicide was registered against the wife at Gandhinagar’s Kalol Taluka police station on the complaint of the father of the dead man. As the police carried out some initial investigations, the woman, a 38-year-old Railways employee, filed for anticipatory bail.

It was alleged that the woman’s first husband too had died by suicide, lawyers in the case said. The woman’s application for anticipatory bail was decided at the end of July, and she was taken into custody on August 4. On Monday (September 14), the Gujarat High Court gave her regular bail, noting that the investigation in the case had been completed, a chargesheet had been filed, and there was nothing left to recover from her.

Justice Hasmukh D Suthar noted that the case against the woman rested primarily on her troubled matrimonial relationship. The man and the five-year-old child were found dead on July 14, 2025. According to the prosecution, the husband had travelled from Delhi to Gujarat with the boy just days before the incident.

His marriage had allegedly “deteriorated”, and he was in a custody battle with his wife over their son in court in Delhi. The couple had wed in 2018, seven years previously. The husband used to work as an accountant in Bengaluru, but had moved to a job in Gandhinagar, where his father worked as a security guard.

Earlier in 2025, the man had filed for divorce after accusing his wife of allegedly “having an affair with a man residing in the railway colony” in Delhi, the High Court noted in its order. The couple’s marriage had been “floundering” for some time, and the husband had filed applications at the Tilak Marg police station in New Delhi in September 2023, December 2023, and December 2024, the order said.

In her petition, the wife said that the deceased husband was apprehensive that the custody of their son would be granted to her at the next hearing in Delhi, and that this had added to his distress. On the morning of July 14, the man and his son were found hanging from a fan in a room at the living quarters provided to the man’s father by his company.

As per the submissions of Advocate Jigneshkumar Nayak, who appeared for the applicant-wife, the husband had left behind a suicide note saying that he was facing “immense stress as he was afraid of losing” his son. The FIR against the woman was registered on the complaint of the deceased man’s father who alleged that the applicant-wife had “mentally harassed and beaten” her husband.

The FIR registered in January also contained allegations of the woman’s purported extramarital relationship, and said that the deceased husband had referred to the alleged harassment in a suicide note. The applicant-wife denied these allegations and argued before the High Court that she had been living separately from her husband for years, and that she had neither instigated nor abetted his alleged suicide.