Shariat Court reverses move to decriminalise death by suicide
• Strikes down legislation, restores Section 325 of the PPC
• Rules suicide is a cardinal sin in Islam, any attempt promotes ‘anti-life act’
ISLAMABAD: The Federal Shariat Court (FSC) on Monday declared the decriminalisation of suicide attempts repugnant to the injunctions of Islam and struck down the 2022 legislation through which the act had been removed as an offence from the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
A three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman, Justice Syed Muhammad Anwar and Justice Amir Khan announced the reserved verdict on two separate petitions challenging the amendments introduced through the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2022.
One of the petitions was filed by Advocate Hammad Saeed Dar in 2023 and the other by advocates Muhammad Azam Malik and Muhammad Kashif Sulehri in 2025.
Giving its ruling on the pleas, the court declared relevant provisions of the 2022 law repugnant to injunctions of Islam and consequently void.
Moreover, it restored Section 325 of the Pakistan Penal Code.
Prior to the 2022 amendment, Section 325 prescribed simple imprisonment or a fine or both for a person who attempted suicide. The provision had been repealed as part of broader criminal law reforms aimed at treating suicide attempts as a mental health issue rather than a criminal offence.
“The decriminalisation of a crime through the impugned Act No. XXXVII, titled Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2022, whereby Section 325 of the PPC, 1860 has been omitted is against the principles of the Holy Quran and Sunnah,” the judgement authored by Justice Dr Syed Muhammad Anwer stated.
The court observed that “suicide is undoubtedly a cardinal sin in Islam and is an anti-life act, hence any effort to attempt its commission is also considered as an act to promote an anti-life act”.
The FSC ruled that that the 2022 amendment would have no legal effect immediately following its judgement, and Section 325 of the PPC stood restored.
‘Blanket cover cannot be granted’
The petitioners had argued in their pleas that suicide was prohibited in Islam and that the criminalisation of suicide attempts served as a deterrent. They contended that decriminalising the act effectively creates a “right to suicide”, which they said was not permissible according to Islamic jurisprudence.
The respondents, including the federation of Pakistan, had opposed the pleas, contending that the 2022 amendment did not legalise suicide but merely repealed the punishment for a suicide attempt, instead shifting focus to treatment and rehabilitation of the individual concerned. They argued that penalising mentally distressed individuals contradicted Islamic principles of mercy.
The court, however, found this reasoning flawed.
It examined the objects and reasons of the 2022 legislation, which stated that suicide was “always” committed by a person suffering from depression or a mental illness.
The court questioned whether depression or a mental illness was the only cause for attempting suicide and listed multiple other situations involving suicide attempts. These included attempts for terrorism, hunger strikes for political gain, self-immolation for agitation, relief from financial burden of medical care, online games like the Blue Whale Challenge and religious cult motivations.
Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2026