AIIMS suicide: Accused seek quashing of abetment charge

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat high court on Thursday issued a notice to the state govt seeking its reply to a petition filed by five medical students from AIIMS, Rajkot, who are facing abetment charges after a final-year student committed suicide last month leaving behind suicide notes.Five MBBS students — Pranav Paliwal, Asmit Sharma, Ayush Yadav, Nirvighnam Noor and Yuvraj Chaudhary — were arrested on the charges of abetment to suicide under BNS and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act after their classmate Ratan Meghwal from Rajasthan committed suicide on March 14. The accused were arrested and later released on bail. They approached the high court for quashing of the FIR. Senior advocate Mitesh Amin submitted that Meghwal wrote three suicide notes on different dates. The first was circulated on social media on Jan 27 when he first attempted suicide. This note was addressed to the institute's faculty members. The second note, also to the faculty members, came after he was taken home. The third was found from a bag lying near his body at a railway track on March 14. It was submitted to the court that the accused had stopped talking to Meghwal since his first suicide attempt.On the medical treatment received by the deceased, it was submitted that he was suffering from schizophrenia and one of the suicide notes mentioned the name of a girl. Meghwal's statement before the police was also cited, in which he mentioned that he had not talked to the five students for a month.The state govt opposed the petition and submitted that the FIR mentioned the first suicide note, in which the deceased student alleged that he had been beaten by the accused students a day before. After preliminary hearing, Justice M R Mengdey issued a notice to the state govt and to Meghwal's father, who filed the complaint. The next hearing has been scheduled for June 22.