Yet Another Lynching

NEW DELHI: Just two weeks after Rakbar Khan was lynched in Alwar, Rajasthan, another young man has been beaten to death by villagers in Pawal Haryana on the charge of being a cattle thief. The Haryana police have not identified the body, claiming that a postmortem has been done and the results are awaited. As a result no one from the family of the deceased could be present for the postmortem.

The police version this time is that the “25 year old” youth who was killed was one of “three”. The villagers claimed they were stealing cattle, and while two escaped, one was caught, his feet and hands tied, and he was beaten to death.

The police claim that only three persons assaulted the boy and that one of them has been arrested. An FIR has been filed against the three.

Usually details of such lynchings follow the incident but although the youth was killed last night, and just 80 km from Delhi, the body reportedly remains ‘unidentified’. Lynchings have created terror and fear in India’s countryside with the Supreme Court taking note of this and urging Parliament to bring a special law to stop this crime. Despite this Rakbar Khan, a Meo Muslim fro Haryana was brutally killed with this lynching the second within weeks.

A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra held that it was the obligation of the State to protect citizens and ensure that the "pluralistic social fabric" of the country holds against mob violence. After Rakbar Khan was killed, the apex court was approached by petitioners with a contempt of court plea that the judges said would be taken up in August when the other petitions were heard.

"Despite your order to the States to appoint nodal officers to prevent such incidents, there was a lynching and death just 60 km away from Delhi just recently," senior advocate Indira Jaising had submitted.

Jaising argued that the incidents of lynchings go "beyond the description of law and order... these crimes have a pattern and a motive. For instance, all these instances happen on highways. This court had asked the States to patrol the highways".

The court had stated very clearly that it was the obligation of the centre and the states to ensure that “no one takes the law into his hands nor become a law into himself.” However, the brutal killings continue with innocent being beaten to death for alleged cow smuggling, slaughter and recently on child abduction rumours.