Juris Centre

Legality and Procedural Legal Loopholes Regarding Non-Psychotic Auto-Cannibalism

Auto cannibalism, or autosarcophagy, is not legally defined as a crime in India. Cannibalism, specifically necrophagy itself, is not identified as a crime under Indian law; such acts are usually prosecuted as murder and as desecration of a corpse under Section 301 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS). This is precisely why non-psychotic auto-cannibalism presents a substantial legal loophole: it cannot be tried under the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, because it is non-psychotic and non-suicidal, and because the act is directed at the person’s own body, it cannot be brought within Section 301 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita either.

The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, extensively addresses attempted suicide and, through the abetment provisions of the BNS, abetment to suicide; yet it contains no explicit mention of self-harm or related acts such as autosarcophagy. In the case of suicide, the statutory assumption is that the person is not acting in their right mind. This article asks whether that assumption ought to carry over to self-harm and autosarcophagy. It examines two notorious Indian “cannibalism” prosecutions—the Nithari killings and the Elanthoor ritual sacrifice—as procedural cautionary tales; contrasts the parallel lacuna in necrophilia law; draws on Ireland as a comparative model; and argues for a graduated expansion of the care-and-duty framework of the Act. 

This research aims to suggest any viable procedural law changes to include cannibalism and necrophilia within the existing laws, or whether a new separate legislation is required to address the complex issues of cannibalism, auto cannibalism and necrophilia 

II. Conceptualising Auto-Cannibalism: The Psychotic and Non-Psychotic Divide

Autosarcophagy—the consumption of part of one’s own body—is medically recognised but legally unaddressed. A qualitative systematic review by Senthilkumar and others screened 550 studies and identified eighteen reports covering twenty-four patients up to December 2019, finding that documentation of autosarcophagy had increased roughly sixfold since 2006, and that more than three-fourths of multiple attempts were by non-psychotic patients. The behaviour has been associated with Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, congenital pain insensitivity and self-mutilation. The forensic literature records self-cannibalism both with psychosis and, critically, in the complete absence of psychiatric illness or substance abuse.

This distinction is the doctrinal hinge of the present enquiry. Indian criminal law’s only mental-state escape hatch is the “unsound mind” defence, formerly Section 84 of the Indian Penal Code and now Section 22 of the BNS. A non-psychotic autosarcophage is, by definition, outside that defence—and yet has harmed no person other than themselves. Forensic scholarship reinforces the point: cannibalistic behaviour is not coextensive with insanity, and has been documented in matricide cases with no evidence of active psychosis.

III. The Statutory Void in Indian Law

A. Desecration of a Corpse

Section 301 of the BNS punishes a person who, with the intent to wound feelings or insult religion, commits trespass on the place of burial or offers any indignity to a human corpse, with imprisonment for up to one year, or fine, or both. The provision protects corpses and religious sentiment—not a living person’s body, and certainly not the autosarcophage’s own body. Cannibalism following a killing is therefore prosecuted as the underlying homicide under Sections 100 to 103 of the BNS, with the post-mortem consumption adding, at most, a Section 301 indignity count. Necrophagy as such remains not criminalised.

B. The Mental Healthcare Act and the Suicide Frame

Section 115(1) of the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 provides that, notwithstanding Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, any person who attempts suicide shall be presumed, unless proved otherwise, to have severe stress, and shall not be tried or punished. Section 115(2) imposes a duty on the appropriate Government to provide care, treatment and rehabilitation. The provision, however, reaches only attempted suicide, not non-suicidal self-injury and not autosarcophagy. The presumption is itself contested: in 2020, the Supreme Court asked the Union to justify a blanket presumption of “severe stress,” a term the Act never defines. The Bombay High Court has held that a woman who cut herself could not be tried under Section 309 because Section 115(1) has overriding effect—a useful illustration that the presumption already reaches self-cutting, but only where the act can be framed as a suicide attempt.

C. Abetment to suicide/self-harm (auto cannibalism) persists 

Even within a decriminalised self-harm regime, third parties remain liable. Section 45 of the BNS defines abetment by instigation, conspiracy or intentional aid, and Section 108 of the BNS punishes abetment of suicide with imprisonment up to ten years. This is the structural feature any reform should preserve. It is, however, hard to enforce: the conviction rate for abetment of suicide was only 17.5 per cent in 2022, against an overall rate of 69.8 per cent for offences under the Indian Penal Code.

IV. The Nithari Case: How Procedural Law Collapses

In December 2006, skeletal remains of children were recovered from a drain behind house D-5, Sector 31, Nithari, Noida, owned by businessman Moninder Singh Pandher; his domestic servant, Surendra Koli, was the principal accused. The investigation was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation in January 2007. Allegations included rape, dismemberment, organ trade and necrophagy. Trial courts convicted and imposed death sentences across multiple cases, and the Supreme Court initially affirmed Koli’s death sentence in 2011.

On 16 October 2023, a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court acquitted Koli, reversing its prior decision, holding that the prosecution had failed the parameters of a circumstantial-evidence case. The court found that the confession recorded under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure—taken after sixty days of police remand, without medical examination, without legal aid, and ignoring torture allegations—could not be treated as voluntary. It held that the investigation had opted for the easy course of implicating a poor servant while failing to probe the more serious possibility of organised organ trading, describing the failure as a betrayal of public trust. The Supreme Court affirmed the acquittals on 30 July 2025, finding no perversity in the High Court verdict, citing non-compliance with Section 27 of the Evidence Act in the recovery of remains, and observing that the trial verdict appeared to rest on a media trial. The final death-sentence case was resolved by a curative bench on 11 November 2025, which acquitted Koli and recorded its deep regret that the identity of the actual perpetrator had never been established to legal standards. 

This case is often used to showcase the difficulties of convicting criminals accused of cannibalism. Cannibalism is most widely self-reported and based on circumstantial evidence. The evidence required to convict Koli was merely based on his own confession, which, given the facts, was unreliable. This case also highlighted the bias that police have in not properly investigating cases involving migrant families who belong to a lower economic status. The case highlights the scapegoating of the poor servant in the house of Pandher. where the obvious suspect was the owner, the servant was tortured into providing a confession. 

The lesson is analytical, not Vindicatory: the outcome turned on the State’s evidentiary shortcuts, not on any doctrinal treatment of cannibalism. Where investigation fails, the substantive law is never reached.

V. The Elanthoor Human Sacrifice Case

In 2022, two women, both lottery vendors, were murdered in an alleged ritual “human sacrifice for prosperity” at the Elanthoor, Pathanamthitta, home of Bhagaval Singh and his wife Laila, orchestrated by Muhammad Shafi. The bodies were exhumed in October 2022, and the accused were alleged to have dismembered and consumed the victims’ flesh, with cannibalism carried into the chargesheets. Two voluminous charge sheets were filed before the Ernakulam court in January 2023, invoking Sections 302, 376D, 120B, 364, 201, 370, 342 and 297 of the Indian Penal Code. Notably, no dedicated anti-superstition or “human sacrifice” statute exists in Kerala under which the ritual element could be charged.

Charges were framed in April 2025, and witness examination began only in March 2026—roughly forty-one months after the crime—a delay attributable in part to forensic-report backlogs. As in Nithari, the prosecution rests heavily on confessions said by the defence to be coerced and on circumstantial evidence, underscoring how fragile cannibalism prosecutions are at the evidentiary level. The investigations are still ongoing, but this case might spark new conversations about anti-cannibalism and anti-necrophilia laws.

VI. The Parallel Lacuna: Necrophilia

Necrophilia exposes the same structural gap. In Rangaraju v. State of Karnataka (2023), a Division Bench held that sexual intercourse with a corpse does not attract Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code(rape), because a dead body is not a “person”; the murder conviction was upheld, but the rape conviction was set aside. The court urged the Union to amend the law or enact a dedicated necrophilia offence. The Supreme Court declined to disturb that view on 4 February 2025, holding that since necrophilia was not an offence, no different view was warranted. The R.G. Kar Medical College rape and murder of 2024—which prompted suo motu cognisance by the Supreme Court—intensified these calls. The parallel to cannibalism is exact: where the protected categories (“person,” “rape,” “corpse desecration with religious intent”) do not fit the conduct, the conduct falls through the net. England, Canada and New Zealand all criminalise necrophilia expressly.

VII. A Comparative Lens: Ireland’s Care-and-Capacity Model

Ireland decriminalised suicide through the Criminal Law (Suicide) Act 1993, while Section 2(2) made it an offence to aid, abet, counsel, or procure the suicide or attempted suicide of another, punishable by up to fourteen years. The constitutionality of that retained offence was upheld in Fleming v. Ireland, which held that there is no constitutional right to assisted suicide, though the legislature may legislate on the matter.

More importantly, Ireland pairs decriminalisation with a robust duty of care. The Mental Health Act 2001 governs involuntary admission with the patient’s best interests as the principal consideration, and the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 introduced advance healthcare directives, progressively strengthened so that such directives are increasingly binding even for involuntary patients. Brendan Kelly’s scholarship analyses precisely this self-harm and advance-directive interface, noting the persisting rule that refusals of treatment for physical illness unrelated to a mental disorder must be respected. Ireland thus marries decriminalisation of the self-directed act with a care-and-capacity duty and a retained third-party offence—the very structure India should emulate. India has one of the highest youth suicide rates. Providing proper care to this vulnerable population should be our main goal. In order to implement the Irish model of mental healthcare, India needs to massively increase its infrastructure. The Irish model also raises interesting questions, like should the attempt of suicide come with an immediate assumption of stress? This raises the question of legislation for assisted suicides: should they be implemented or not? In my personal opinion, India is not yet prepared for legislation for assisted suicide, but it should work towards policies to allow assisted suicide. If the Constitution provides us with a right to life, is there an implicit negative right to die as well? The Supreme Court has time and again verified that it doesn’t provide a right to die, but that is inconsistent with the fundamental right to liberty.

VIII. Legal Cannablism: Placentophagy and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury

A. Placentophagy

Placentophagy—postpartum ingestion of one’s own placenta—is the most socially normalised instance of arguable auto cannibalism. A review by Farr and others found no contemporary human culture incorporating it as tradition, only anecdotal benefits, and observed that the practice borders on cannibalism because the placenta is genetically part of the newborn. Public-health authorities have documented neonatal infection traced to maternal placenta-capsule consumption. In India, the placenta is classified as anatomical waste under the Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules, 2016, normally requiring incineration, though some protocols permit release to the family after disinfection for religious rites. A mother’s consumption of her own placenta is, on the present law, the clearest real-world instance of non-criminal auto-cannibalism. It is practised in the USA, UK and UAE, among others, where companies like Mommy Made Encapsulation and Nova Birth Partners make it into an accessible pill form.

B. Non-Suicidal Self-Injury

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is conceptually distinct from suicide: it is a maladaptive coping mechanism without intent to die. A 2025 systematic review observed that NSSI research has developed largely in Western contexts and that an India-focused synthesis had not previously been undertaken. The legal difficulty is that the protective presumption of Section 115 is on the basis of suicidal intent; a person who self-injures, or self-cannibalises, without that intent enjoys neither the presumption of severe stress nor the statutory duty of care will apply in such a case. Autosarcophagy is simply the extreme edge of NSSI—and precisely the case the present law cannot classify (the main loophole).

IX. Cultural and Historical Context

Ritual and survival cannibalism are deeply attested. The Aghori, a Tantric Shaivite ascetic sect around Varanasi, practise post-mortem consumption of flesh as an enactment of non-duality. Kuru, the first recognised human prion disease, spread among the Fore of Papua New Guinea through mortuary cannibalism and declined once the practice ceased. Archaeologically, osteological evidence alone often cannot distinguish survival from ritual cannibalism—a methodological caution that bears directly on forensic identification in prosecutions such as Nithari and Elanthoor.

X. The Possible Solutions 

Across cannibalism, necrophilia and self-harm, Indian law fails in the same way: morally salient conduct falls outside the protective categories the statutes employ. Non-psychotic auto-cannibalism is the purest case—no other victim, no insanity, no suicide, no corpse—and so is invisible to both the criminal law and the Act. The choice is therefore deliberate: either treat such a person as a criminal, which no statute presently permits and which the Act’s logic rejects, or treat them as a patient owed a duty of care. Expanding the care category is the coherent answer.

  1. Expansion of Section 115 of the Mental Healthcare Act. Amend Section 115 of the Mental Healthcare Act, or insert a new Section, i.e., 115A, to extend the presumption of severe stress and the duty of care from attempts at suicide to non-suicidal self-injury, including serious self-mutilation, with autosarcophagy as a named illustration. This converts autosarcophagy from a legal non-event into a trigger for a statutory care obligation, which is required by the person, given their possible state of mind during such an act.
  2. Define “Severe Stress” And A Capacity Standard Within The MHA. Borrowing from Ireland’s Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, build a capacity-assessment and advance-directive mechanism into the Act so that the presumption is operationalised rather than left vague.
  3. Preserve Abetment liability. Retain Sections 45 and 108 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, and consider an Ireland-style standalone offence for aiding or procuring serious self-injury, drafted with a clear instigation threshold given the low abetment conviction rate. More awareness campaigns regarding suicide and self-harm prevention for teenagers should also be encouraged and a part of mandatory school work. Easy access to functional resources for suicide and self-harm operated by certified psychologists.
  4. Laws addressing necrophilia and necrophagy. Enact the necrophilia offence, the Karnataka High Court urged, and broaden Section 301 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita to cover indignity to a corpse without the present religious-intent requirement. Also include necrophagy among the offences so that the full extent of the crimes can be properly addressed and offenders convicted.
  5. Adopt procedural safeguards. Mandate contemporaneous medical examination and legal aid before custodial confessions in grave cases, strict recovery protocols under the new evidence law, and statutory timelines for forensic reports—the absence of which produced the Nithari acquittals and the Elanthoor delay.
  6. Push for state-assisted suicides. The need for legislation regarding the right to die (Article 21 of the Constitution). There is also a need for extensive legal research regarding the legislation and infrastructural changes required to implement the right to die. Presently, India has allowed Passive euthanasia, but the push for active euthanasia will allow citizens to have an absolute right to liberty over their personal life and death.

XI. Conclusion

Non-psychotic auto-cannibalism is not a sensational curiosity but a clean test of how Indian law treats conduct that harms only the self. The statutory void it exposes is shared by necrophilia and, more broadly, by non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). The procedural law collapses in Nithari and Elanthoor show that even where a death is involved, cannibalism cases founder on evidence long before doctrine is reached. A measured expansion of the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017—recognising self-harm as a matter of duty to care rather than criminalising it, while preserving liability for those who abet such actions. It would close the gap without resort to the criminal sanction that the Mental Health Care Act was designed to remove. In my opinion, much more research needs to be conducted regarding the Mental Health Care Act to better help the vulnerable parts of our population, as Thomas Reed said: “A chain is no stronger than its weakest link”. India also needs to work on better awareness programs for the youth of India, as they contribute the single largest population in terms of suicide. Awareness programs at the school and college levels should be mandated, and children should have access to proper helplines and resources for those seeking mental healthcare. There is a lot of stigma and superstition around mental health and suicide in India; it’s time we changed shame into empowerment. Survivors of suicide should be able to live peaceful lives, and the key to that is awareness and empathy. 

References

A. Statutes, Rules and Bills

  • Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 (Act No. 64/2015) (Ir.).
  • Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (India).
  • INDIA CONST. art. 21
  • Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules, 2016, G.S.R. 343(E) (India).
  • Crimes Act 1961, § 150 (N.Z.).
  • Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46, § 182 (Can.).
  • Criminal Law (Suicide) Act 1993 (Act No. 11/1993) (Ir.).
  • Mental Health Act 2001 (Act No. 25/2001) (Ir.).
  • Mental Health Bill 2024 (Ir.).
  • Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, No. 10 of 2017 (India).
  • Sexual Offences Act 2003, c. 42, § 70 (U.K.).

B. Cases

  • Fleming v. Ireland [2013] IEHC 2, aff’d [2013] IESC 19 (Ir.).
  • In re Alleged Rape and Murder Incident of a Trainee Doctor in R.G. Kar Medical College, Kolkata (S.C., suo motu, 2024).
  • Rangaraju v. State of Karnataka, 2023 SCC OnLine Kar 23.
  • Shital Dinkar Bhagat v. State of Maharashtra, 2024 SCC OnLine Bom 2765.
  • State of Karnataka v. Rangaraju, SLP (Crl.) No. 5403 of 2024 (S.C., Feb. 4, 2025).
  • Surendra Koli v. State of U.P., (2023) 2 HCC (All) 530.

C. Books, Articles and Reports

  • Silvia M. Bello, “The Archaeology of Cannibalism: a Review of the Taphonomic Traits Associated with Survival and Ritualistic Cannibalism,” 32 Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (2025).
  • Genevieve L. Buser et al., “Notes from the Field: Late-Onset Infant Group B Streptococcus Infection Associated with Maternal Consumption of Capsules Containing Dehydrated Placenta – Oregon, 2016,” 66 MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report 677–8 (2017).
  • Roger W. Byard, “Cannibalism—overview and medicolegal issues,” 19 Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology 281–7 (2023). DOI: 10.1007/s12024-023-00623-4
  • “Human placentophagy: a review – American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology,”available at: https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(17)30963-8/abstract (last visited June 24, 2026).
  • Brendan D. Kelly, “Advance healthcare directives in psychiatry in Ireland: legal provisions, clinical challenges, and ethical issues in relation to self-harm and suicide” Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine 1–6 (2025). doi:10.1017/ipm.2025.6
  • Randi Libbon, Gareen Hamalian and Joel Yager, “Self-cannibalism (autosarcophagy) in psychosis: a case report,” 203 The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 152–3 (2015). DOI: 10.1097/NMD.0000000000000252
  • Paweł P. Liberski et al., “Kuru, the First Human Prion Disease,” 11 Viruses 232 (2019). DOI: 10.3390/v11030232
  • “A Systematic Review of Non-suicidal Self-Injury in India—Kriti Madhok, Sabeen H. Rizvi, 2025,”available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00207640251392156 (last visited June 24, 2026).
  • Erik Monasterio and Craig Prince, “Self-cannibalism in the absence of psychosis and substance use,” 19 Australasian Psychiatry: Bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists 170–2 (2011).DOI:10.3109/10398562.2010.526219
  • “भारत में आकस्मिक मौतें एवं आत्महत्याएँ वर्षवार | National Crime Records Bureau,”available at: https://www.ncrb.gov.in/accidental-deaths-suicides-in-india-year-wise.html (last visited June 24, 2026).
  • National Crime Records Bureau, Crime in India 2022 (2023).
  • Matteo Antonio Sacco et al., “Multidisciplinary approach to matricide and post-mortem cannibalism: Integrating medico-legal and psychiatric investigations,” 11 Forensic Science International: Synergy 100615 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2025.100615
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Government Vellore Medical college Hospital, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India and Arumugam Subramanian Senthilkumar, “Autosarcophagy: A Systematic Review of Psychological Correlates, with Genetic Propositions,” 08 Journal of Medical Science And clinical Research (2020). https://dx.doi.org/10.18535/jmscr/v8i2.138
  • Kim L. Gratz et al., “Diagnosis and Characterization of DSM-5 Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Disorder Using the Clinician-Administered Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Disorder Index,” 22 Assessment 527 (2015). PMID: 25604630

D. News Reports

Abbreviations 

BNSBharatiya nyay Sanhita 
MHAMental healthcare act 
NSSINon suicidal self injury 

Author: Udita Haldi

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