Mumbai: A Mumbai court granted bail to Aditya Pandit, the jailed boyfriend of an Air India pilot who allegedly committed suicide last month. 

Air India Pilot Suicide Case 

Pilot Srishti Tuli (25), who lived in a rented flat in the ‘Kanakia Rain Forest’ building in Marol area, was found dead in the early hours of November 25.

A day later, police arrested Pandit (27), her boyfriend, and charged him with abetment of suicide under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) section 108. 

His bail application was allowed by Additional Sessions Judge (Dindoshi court) T T Aglawe. But the detailed order has not bee made available yet.

The complaint lodged by Tuli’s father said the accused and his daughter were residing in the same room for five-six days prior to her suicide. However, on the day of the incident the accused left for Delhi.

As per the complaint, the accused and the deceased had different food preferences and this was a matter of contention between them.

Tuli was a non-vegetarian and the accused a vegetarian. Pandit constantly put pressure on Tuli to change her food habits may have led her to commit suicide, the complainant alleged.

However, Pandit’s lawyer, Aniket Nikam argued that a case of abetment of suicide was not made out.

“Merely because there were some fights between both of them, it would not mean that the applicant had any criminal intent,” he said.

Nikam further argued that in order to attract the charge of abetment, it was necessary to show that the deceased was left with no other option but to commit suicide.

“This was not so in the present case. The deceased was an educated lady. If she was unhappy in the relationship, she could have always walked out of it or if she was being harassed by the accused she could have complained about it,” he said.

Neither there was any complaint earlier nor any suicide note, and hence it cannot be said that the applicant abetted the suicide, the lawyer argued.

Pandit, in his bail application, mentioned that when he was on his way to the national capital, he called Tuli multiple times, but got no response. He got worried and rushed back to Mumbai and found the door of her flat locked from inside.

When Tuli did not open the door despite repeated knocks, Pandit called a key maker and got it opened. On finding his girlfriend hanging in the flat, he, as a law-abiding citizen, rushed her to hospital in order to save her life. However, the said effort became infructuous, his petition said.

“It is submitted that without admitting any of the allegations, even if, the entire FIR is taken as it is, it does not indicate any such abetment of suicide. Only because an FIR has been registered by the respondents, the applicant (Pandit) came to be arrested,” it said. 

With PTI Inputs