By Sanjay Raman Sinha
The recent verdict of the sessions court in Alwar, Rajasthan, in the 2018 Rakbar Khan lynching case was significant. The court sentenced four persons to seven years’ imprisonment for lynching Khan, a Muslim dairy farmer from Haryana, on the suspicion of smuggling cows. The fifth accused was acquitted for lack of evidence. This is the first conviction by a court in a case of violence by cow vigilantes in the state.
The July 2018 incident was one of a series of lynching incidents by cow vigilantes of the state which saw the light of justice at courts. Interestingly, the court said in its verdict that the convicts did not intend to cause death. The accused took the law in their own hands and beat up Khan while trying to stop smuggling of cows. The accused were charged for “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” under Section 304 and wrongful restraint under Section 341 of the Indian Penal Code. The chargesheet amply demonstrates the limits to which the police can stretch itself to make life easy for the culprits.
Take the instance of the Pehlu Khan lynching case of 2017. All the six accused, caught on camera, were acquitted by the court, on the benefit of doubt as there were contradictions in the investigation and the prosecution’s evidence. Here again, the police was in the dock. The prosecution lacunae is clearly a relief for the offenders of murderous crime. In fact, the home department of Rajasthan has issued an advisory to stop mob lynching in compliance with the order of the Supreme Court. However, the ground realities are different, not only in Rajasthan, but also in other states as well.
The laxity of the police is apparent in many cases. Jharkhand has the highest incident of deaths due to lynching in India. These could well have been prevented, but for inaction or complicity of the police. On June 26, 2020, the Jharkhand High Court dismissed a petition filed by Harsh Mander seeking answer from the state government over the implementation of the Tehseen Poonawalla guidelines Among the points raised in the plea was lack of accountability of public officials and dereliction of duty.
The data in mob lynching cases are found wanting. The National Crime Records Bureau has refused to publish the data it had collected on mob lynching as a separate crime, holding the available data to be unreliable. As such, the official stand is in blinkers.
At present, there is no law for mob lynching. Currently, the police takes action under various sections of the IPC. For years now, there has been an effort to bring a centralized umbrella law to deal with mob lynching, but to no avail. Only a handful of states have enacted anti-mob lynching law. There have been efforts to formulate a central law on mob lynching. Recommendations and a draft bill for anti-mob lynching has also been marshalled. A Group of Ministers was constituted by the central government following activist Tehseen S Poonawalla’s deliberations on the issue. The National Campaign against Lynching Mobs prepared a bill known as the Manav Suraksha Act to start a legal dialogue. Prakash Ambedkar and Poonawalla were involved in the initiative. However, not much has come out of it.
In the Tehseen S Poonawalla vs Union of India case of 2018, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, comprising the then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, had issued guidelines to tackle mob lynching. The Court placed the onus of controlling mob lynching on the central and state governments as well as the law enforcement agencies. It stated: “Apart from the directions we have given herein before and what we have expressed, we think it appropriate to recommend to the legislature, that is, the Parliament, to create a separate offence for lynching and provide adequate punishment for the same.” Manipur was one of the first state which enacted anti-lynching law in consonance with the Supreme Court guidelines. It was the first time when a law defined mob lynching.
The Manipur Law defined mob lynching as “any act or series of acts of violence or aiding, abetting such act/acts thereof, whether spontaneous or planned, by a mob on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, language, dietary practices, sexual orientation, political affiliation, ethnicity or any other related grounds.” It proposed criminal culpability for erring government officials and policemen. A failure to prevent mob lynching crime in their jurisdiction would subject them to imprisonment up to three years and a fine up to Rs 50,000. It also removed the protection of prosecution from erring officials.
The Poonawala verdict came down heavily on the mob lynching trend. It noted: “No individual in his own capacity or as a part of a group, which within no time assumes the character of a mob, can take law into his/their hands and deal with a person treating him as guilty. We may say without any fear of contradiction that lynching by unruly mobs and barbaric violence arising out of incitement and instigation cannot be allowed to become the order of the day. Such vigilantism, be it for whatever purpose or borne out of whatever cause, has the effect of undermining the legal and formal institutions of the State and altering the constitutional order. These extrajudicial attempts under the guise of protection of the law have to be nipped in the bud; lest it would lead to rise of anarchy and lawlessness which would plague and corrode the nation like an epidemic.”
The history of lynching has its roots in the West. It was rampant in America where it was used to subjugate the blacks. During those times, Mark Twain had observed that America has become “the United States of Lyncherdom”. The American courts deplored the menace and dealt strongly with the mob crime. The United States Court stated: “When a private individual takes a person charged with crime from the custody of the state authorities to prevent the state from affording him due process of law, and puts him to death to punish the crime and to prevent the enjoyment of such right, it is violent usurpation.”
The Poonawala case had put the onus of curbing lynching squarely on the state governments, the police and civil administration. Going by the way chargesheets are prepared and subsequently how prosecution argues the case, it is not surprising that acquittal in lynching cases is rare. In June 2017, in Mohd. Allimuddin mob launching case of Ramgarh in Jharkhand, 11 people were sentenced in a very short time by the trial court. This trial is a case study as to how an efficient prosecution in tandem with a strong investigating officer can wrap up the case in a short timeline and bring the culprits to the book.
Despite the Poonawala case guidelines, states have not bothered to comply with the Supreme Court directives. The guidelines focus strongly on accountability of government, civil administration and the police. It is here that the crux of the solution lies.
Poonawala case: Supreme Court guidelines
- The state government should appoint a superintendent of police level officer as nodal officer in every district.
- The state government should identify such areas where such incidents have happened.
- Have a meeting with the Nodal Office Local Intelligence.
- Have a meeting with the DGP and Home Secretary Nodal Officer.
- Cases should be registered immediately under 153A IPC.
- The state government should make a compensation plan for the victims of violence.
- Centre and states should coordinate on the mob lynching issue.
- Public awareness campaign should be initiated against mob lynching.
- Mob lynching case must be moved to fast-track courts.
- The government should bear the expenses of the victim’s lawyer.