Mob lynching in India

Mob lynching in India

Mob lynching in India involves a group of violent people attacking and lynching a person or a group of persons, amounting to hate crime, on the lines of religious violence, caste-based discrimination, and targeting of a particular community.

Instances of mob lynching

Muslims are the largest religious minority community in India. 14 percent of the population in India identifies as Muslim, as per the census held in 2011. Cases of mob lynching against Muslims have been registered, though the implementation of law is hampered by political clout of the accused.[citation needed] Muslims in India have been targeted[1] in the series of cow vigilante attacks since 2014, often on suspicions of theft,[2] being a Muslim or WhatsApp rumors.[3][4]

There have been instance of madrasa students and Islamic clerics attacked and beaten to death.[5] While three men were beaten to death in Bihar, on the suspicion of cattle theft.[6][7][8] A retired army officer was beaten to death in Amethi[9][10][11] while in another case the mob dragged a rape accused from Dimapur jail and lynched them on the road. This came to be known as the Dimapur lynching case, in which the police later charged forty-two people.[12][13][14]

On 27 June 2019, in Patna, a driver was beaten to death by mobs when he lost control over the vehicle and mowed on the footpath, where children were sleeping. Minor injuries to the children were reported.[15] A seventy-three years old doctor was beaten to death in Jorhat, Assam by tea garden workers, for allegedly being away from hospital duty when a tea garden worker came to the hospital in critical condition and no one was available, as a result of which he died.[16][17][18][19]

Christians, Sikhs, Adivasis, and Dalits have also been attacked in mob lynching cases. An Australian Christian missionary, Graham Staines, was burned alive along with his two sons in Odisha.[20] Dalits, on the other hand, have been often attacked by groups of upper caste people.[21] A Dalit man was set on fire in the Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh after being mistaken for a thief.[22][23] On 4 August 2019, in Patna, two Sikhs were also attacked by mobs on the suspicion of child theft; one of them died. The police arrested thirty-two people in this case.[24][25] While an Adivasi was also reportedly beaten to death in Kerala for alleged theft.[26]

Lynching of police and administrative officers

On 3 December 2018, police inspector Subodh Kumar Singh was shot in the head in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh (he was one of the key witnessed in the Dadri mob lynching case);[27][28][29][30][31] the police arrested seven people and all got bail[32] [33][34]

On 24 August 2019, a Gujarat police constable, Arif Ismail Shaikh, was assaulted and attacked by mobs for his Muslim identity[35][36][37][38][39][40]

A female forest ranger, C. Anitha, was attacked my mobs in the state of Telangana[41][42]

Anti-mob lynching law

The Supreme court of India directed the Parliament to make a special law on mob lynching in an order in July 2018,[43] The Parliament is yet to enact a law on mob lynching.[44][45][46]

Some members of the Parliament had questioned the government on the progress, with respect to the law on mob lynching.[47]

The Congress-led government in Rajasthan, passed its State specific anti-mob lynching bill criminalising mob lynching, in 2019.[48][49] Following which, the Trinamool Congress-led government of West Bengal also passed a state=specific law criminalising mob lynching.[50][51][52] The West Bengal bill was supported by both Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). It was neither supported nor opposed by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state legislative assembly.[53][54][55