ASSAM MOB LYNCHING

In the state of Assam,three people who were suspected to be Bangladeshi nationals were lynched by a mob on based suspicion that they were involved in cattle smuggling.This horrific incident of mob lynching points to complete breakdown of law in Assam and it adds to series of mob lynching incident witnessed across the country.Whether you talk about Palghar lynching where two Hindu Sadhus were lynched on suspicion that they were thieves,such repetitive incident of mob lynching in country points out to weakening of rule of law and it is a result of complete failure of governance and law and order of the state.See,for a society to have public order its people must have both fear and faith in the rule of law.The fear will not let them violate any law as they would be punished and the faith that justice would be delivered to them on account of injustice.But,in a society where people do not fear the rule of law and where they have lost their faith in rule of law,the people tend to take law in their  hands which results in incident such as mob lynching.So,by this logic we can assume that incidents such as mob lynching takes place in those countries where the governance and law and order machinery has completely failed to maintain public order.This assumption holds very true to state such as Assam because within a span of few weeks this is the second incident which has been witnessed in Assam.According to National Crime Records Bureau(NCRB),Assam has one of the highest crime rates in the country and it register nearly 143 crimes per 1 lakh population.See,if we observe few years,incidents of mob lynching has increased significantly and have been driven by circulation of fake news by social media platforms.Report shows that most incident of mob lynching which has taken place over past few years have been based on fake allegations that the victims who were targeted were involved in-

-Cow slaughtering

-Cattle Smuggling

-kidnapping of children

Even if these allegations are true and even the victims have committed crime as alleged still does not satisfy lynching by the mob.Analysis of these incidents show that most incidents of mob lynching took place on the basis of news circulated on social media and many of the incidents have communal angle to it.The root cause of these incidents is the polarization which already exist in our society.These things enable the mob to loose the fear in the name of the law and it embolden them to take law in their hand and target any individual on mere basis of any allegation or suspicion.

Currently NCRB continuous to list mob lynching as any other act of murder but this needs to be changed as mob lynching is not just any act of murder but it is a hate crime which is being committed by one section of society to another.See,lynching has no place in our democratic civilized society and it is the outcome of police inaction and failure of the government.to uphold and maintain public order.

The Supreme Court has laid down certain guidelines for central and state and has directed them to come out with specific law that deals with mob lynching incidents following these directions of Supreme Court,Manipur  became first state in India to come out with specific anti mob lynching law and followed by Rajasthan and West Bengal.There are provisions under IPC and Crpc which allows mob lynching laws to be treated as Hate crime and does provide for punishment but problem is, these laws are not enforced by center as well as state government.It is this failure in enforcement which has lead to repeated incidents of mob lynching.