21 YO Rajasthan Woman Uses PMS As Defense Against Murder Charge, Gets Acquitted

You’ve seen the memes and you’ve heard the jokes. Hell hath no fury like a woman who is PMSing. For the uninitiated, Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS) is a condition that affects women physically and psychologically a few days before their menses (periods). You might have often heard women use PMS to write off erratic behaviour. Even men tend to use PMS to belittle women’s emotions.

However, what you might not know is that Premenstrual Stress Syndrome (PMS Syndrome) has been used as a legal defense too. A defense that, you’d be surprised to learn, has resulted in acquittal of the female accused in criminal cases. And to this list of rare cases gets added another, this time from the files of the Rajasthan High Court.

The Rajasthan High Court has acquitted a 21-year-old woman of killing a child based on her plea of unsoundness of mind owing to PMS Syndrome.

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The woman, one Kumari Chandra of Nasirabad, had pushed three children into a well. Of these, two children were rescued, but one of them died.

According to Live Law, trial court had convicted Chandra and sentenced her to life imprisonment under Section 302 of the IPC, with four years of rigourous imprisonment. However, in an appeal to the High Court, the sentence was overturned.

As bizarre as this acquittal sounds, it is based on the legal principle of ‘reasonable doubt’.

The burden to prove that the accused is guilty ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ rests with the prosecution. However, all that the accused has to do is create the probability of a ‘reasonable doubt’ about their guilt.

In this case, the accused pleaded that her rare and severe PMS condition made her ‘unsound of mind’ when she committed the crime.

And in keeping with several legal precedents and the McNaughten’s Rule (a test for criminal insanity), this is a valid legal defense that can acquit a person of a crime.

There were several witnesses who testified to the fact that Chandra did indeed suffer from a form of PMS that rendered her near insane, making her aggressive and violent.

The Court took note of the testimonies of three doctors. Two of them had treated Chandra for her condition and attested to it being abnormal compared to other women.

One of them even claimed that during his visit, he had to administer tranquilizers to calm Chandra down.

Another doctor deposed also attested that PMS in some women might lead to extremely violent behaviour and even suicidal thoughts.

Apart from the doctors, Chandra’s school teachers and relatives also testified about her condition.

Based on the above, the bench, comprising Justice Mohammad Rafiq and Justice Goverdhan Bardhar, then proceeded to acquit Chandra.

The bench quoted from a paper published in the Duke Law Journal titled ‘Premenstrual Stress Syndrome As A Defense In Criminal Cases’:

“Premenstrual Stress Syndrome (PMS syndrome) is a disorder afflicting many women. The symptoms of PMS syndrome include excessive thirst and appetite, bloating, headaches, anxiety, depression, irritability, and general lethargy. Diagnosis depends on the timing of the symptoms rather than on their type, number, or severity; not all patients experience all possible symptoms. The symptoms develop and increase in intensity from seven to fourteen days prior to the onset of menses and disappear rapidly thereafter. PMS syndrome can range in severity from mild to incapacitating, in both a physical and psychological sense.”

Furthermore, the bench alluded to the lack of specific precedents or laws pertaining to PMS Syndrome as an insanity defense in India. However, it remarked that the accused had the right to substantiate this claim with evidence.

“Although the law has not much developed in India as to the Premenstrual Stress Syndrome being set up as the defense of insanity, yet the accused has a right to plead and probabilize such defence to show that she was suffering from ‘premenstrual stress syndrome’ when the crime was committed and because of her such condition, the offence that she committed was an involuntary act on her part, inasmuch owing to this fact, she was labouring under the defect of reason or was suffering from psychological disorder or unsoundness of mind. She can, within the scope of Section 84 of the Indian Penal Code, set up such a plea and substantiate the same by evidence.”

PMS Syndrome as a legal insanity defense against crime may be a rare travesty in India, but it has some precedents in international law, dating as far back as 1980s.

According to a New York Times report, in 1980, a 37-year-old Englishwoman was accused of murdering her lover by driving a car into him. However, with PMS as her defense, the murder charge was reduced to a manslaughter charge, and she was released after serving a year in prison.

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In another case, a woman’s three year sentence for threatening to kill a police officer and carrying a knife was reduced to probation on the grounds of PMS.

In her defense, she claimed that her PMS phases turned her into a ‘raging animal each month’.

Both the above cases had a common witness,  Dr. Katharina Dalton, whose research paper has also been quoted by the Rajasthan High Court in their judgement.

The PMS Syndrome defense has been the cynosure of a raging debate for decades now. And mind you, it’s a feminist issue on both sides.

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Some feminists consider this a relief that PMS is being recognised as a serious condition that can escalate in some cases. The literature available on this subject might not be very vast, but the existing material does set store by the fact that some women’s PMS Syndrome is more aggravated than others’.

However, there are those who think that it somehow discredits women in the eyes of men. Case in point, the jokes and memes about PMS.

The question thus still remains up for a healthy debate—is it a valid temporary insanity defense?

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