Mob Lynching – disrupting fabric of our society

Introduction

Lynching is a type of mob justice in which group of people or a mob kills or give punishment to a particular person brutally only on their beliefs and in aggressions without any legal trial.

Mob kills a particular person because when the belief of group of people of one community on a matter is not same or not in accordance with the view of the other community, these kind of conflicts causes mob lynching. The word ‘lynching’ is originated in the United States in mid- 18 century from the name of Charles Lynch. Lynching was prevalent in North America, where it was practiced by whites on blacks.

Lynching is foreign word but that does not mean it is new to India.

Few Cases of Mob Lynching in 2021:

Again, a case of gruesome mob lynching is in news, a man was murdered by group of people at Delhi’s Singhu border which is a spot of ongoing farmers protest against the centre’s three farm laws located in kundli, Sonipat.

At Singhu Border 35yr old man whose name was Lakhbir Singh was found dead on Friday, 15 October, 2021, his body was tied to police barricade with a hand chopped off, broken legs and multiple wounds caused by sharp -edged weapons. He was killed by group of Nihang Sikh. The deceased was of Cheema khurd village in Taran Tarn district of Punjab.

Sarabjit Singh , a Nihang Sikh who is one of accused who released a video in which he was admitting whole crime is done by their group and he also said that Lakhbir singh had been “punished for sacrilege” and they convey message by giving punishment brutally to Lakhbir Singh that if anybody will disrespect Guru Granth Sahib then he would be punished on the spot. But deceased Lakhbir Singh’s wife Jaspreet kaur and sister Raj Kaur were not agreed to their claims, they said “ he had huge respect for the holy Guru Granth Sahib, he was a god-fearing man and could never think of desecrating a holy book”.

Sarabjit Singh, was arrested on Friday and took in seven-day police custody for further investigation. After few hours, Narain Singh was also arrested by Amritsar police at Amarkot village near jandiala guru in Amritsar district. On late Saturday night two more Nihang Sikh- Govindpreet and Bhagwant Singh were also surrendered themselves to kundli police.

In Feb, 25yr old Rinku Sharma was brutally murdered by a mob in Delhi’s Mangolpuri area, a mob of assailants armed with knives and sticks entered into their house forcefully and dragged Rinku Sharma out of his house and beaten brutally and stabbed with knife in back. And he was lost his life in hospital during treatment. Victim’s brother said that victim was harassed by assailants by calling him BJP supporter and they carried out lynching after the family organized an event for the Ram Mandir.

Police arrested four accused, identified as Mohammed Islam, Danish Zahid and Mehtab. But victim family claims that other accused are still at large.

In May at Moradabad in UP, a Muslim man named as Mohammed Shakir was assaulted by a group of men for transporting beef . that group was led by an individual calling himself as ‘gau rakshak’.

Shakir’s brother complaint a FIR against the mob that victim was threatened and then beaten up for riding his scooter with almost 50kg beef and mob also demanded Rs50,000 from Shakir.

Then Manoj Thakur, one of accused lodged counter case against the victim of ‘ mischief by killing an animal’, ‘ committing an act likely to spread infection’, and ‘violation of covid lockdown guidelines. Then police claimed that they arrested all accused who were involved in this incidence.

Over the past few years plenty of incidents of lynching are observed and these incidences emerged tension between diverse communities of our India.

Mob lynching is carried out due to several factors:

► Indifferent attitude towards other religions and cultures.

► Spread of rumors and hatred via social media

► Ineffective and delayed justice

► Impunity leads mob to take law in their own hands as mob has no face

► Intolerance towards pluralism

► Rise in unemployment causes misguided youth ideologically by politician or religious groups

► With modernity, there is growth of individualism and an erosion of associational life.

Laws dealing with Mob Lynching:

There is no specific law which penalize mob lynching as an offence and it makes difficulty in delivering justice and due to this people are taking law into their hands and it poses a serious threat to the rule of law and principles of natural justice.

While sec 223(a) of Crpc, 1973 contains the relevant provision for persons being charged for an offence jointly when they are alleged of the same offence committed in the course of the same transaction which is applicable to two or more people.

The supreme court in 2018 described lynching as a ‘horrendous act of mobocracy’ and issued guidelines for the Centre and State government to make laws which deal with lynching offences and protect India’s ‘pluralist social fabric’ from mob violence.

In 2018 Manipur government came up first with its bills to make laws for mob lynching. The bill specified that there would be nodal officers in each district to control such crimes.

After that Rajasthan and West Bengal government also came up with bills against lynching.

Conclusion:

India has largest democracy in world, the basic and most essential feature of democracy is to protect the life and liberty of the people but today liberty and life is in threat and insecure and these mob lynching cases disrupting threads of our society . As we all can see that state and central governments and our judiciary system have failed again and again to control lynching offences. Social media plays a great role in these kinds of offences where it turning out to be a true serial killer that could not be put in jail. Social media is spreading trail of rumors and disgusting content which is affecting youngsters mostly to uneducated youth which make them aggressive easily to do crimes without proper right knowledge. Only solution is to supervise social media regularly and take legal serious on those accounts which are spreading fake news, hatred news and it will help to control mob lynching crimes.

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