In India, where suicide is illegal, is there an exemption for the Jain ritual of starving oneself to death?

This is a question currently before India's supreme court:

Acts of renunciation are central to many of India’s religions, but no group practices it as radically as the Jains...  No practice is more demanding than santhara [a voluntary, systematic starvation ritual undertaken every year by several hundred Jains]... According to Jain doctrine, the ordeal, which generally must be approved by a guru and the individual’s family members, burns up the film of karma that clogs the soul, allowing the spirit to break free from the cycle of rebirth and death.

In 2006, an activist based in Rajasthan named Nikhil Soni filed a court petition arguing that the practice violated the Indian prohibition of suicide. He contended that people were being encouraged to take the vow when they could no longer properly give consent and that the practice, like suttee, was used to free families of the economic burden of caring for the elderly.

“Why is it that only those people who are ill and on the verge of death are opting for santhara?” he told the documentary filmmaker Shekhar Hattangadi. “Is it that it’s being imposed on them?”...

Jain leaders... argue that the practice is constitutionally protected....

The linked NYT article contains some glowing description of the ritual.

I once gave an exam in my Religion and the Constitution class where I'd made up a religion that had the practitioners murdering each other. I kept my description respectful and couched in spiritual beliefs about death, and not one student wrote that this is murder and of course the government could and should make it illegal.