Rajya Sabha has recently passed the ‘Mental Health Care Bill’ to decriminalize suicide. Various peoples including academia, experts and political were consulted to formulate this bill. The bill that included 134 official amendments was passed without any dissent by voice vote. At present, attempt to suicide is a criminal offense and the person can be retained under Section-309 of IPC, which provides for up to one year's simple imprisonment or fine or both.
First introduced by UPA-II, the original bill had proposed presuming people trying to commit suicide due to suffering from "severe stress", which has now been changed. The current bill, in addition, to decriminalizing suicide, also says that government shall provide "care, treatment, and rehabilitation" to such an attempt to reduce the risk of recurrence. Answering to the objection made to the specification of a word “severe stress”…
