Lynching according to Wikipedia is a premeditated extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate a group. The name was derived from Col. Charles Lynch who was a plantation owner in Virginia in the 1790's. He had a habit of conducting illegal trials of alleged lawbreakers, mostly his black plantation workers, in his front yard who were tied to poles and tortured ultimately killing them in most inhuman ways. This was done to keep his plantation workers, the black slaves, terrorised and intimidated. A large number of people used to assemble to witness the horror of the victims.  If violence starts and is lauded, and abetted, and is not discouraged, then more join in the display.

The case in North East is no different. The Dimapur incident a few years back when a frenzied crowd of  a thousand stormed a jail and took out an alleged rapist making him walk naked a five km route while the mob kicked him, beat him up, stoned and ultimately hung from a poll in the middle of the city. In Assam the lynchings earlier were restricted to tea garden areas where impoverished garden labourers used to kill men and women suspecting them of practicing witchcraft. But the conscience of society was awoken when two youths including an Assamese was brutally lynched by over a hundred people in Karbi Anglong district on suspicion of being child lifters.

Hearing a batch of petitions filed by social activist Tehseen Poonawala and Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar Gandhi following a string of lynchings by self-styled cow vigilantes, the Supreme Court on Tuesday said recurrent mob violence in India cannot be allowed to become the new normal, asking the executive to take quick action to rein in instances of lynching by self-styled vigilantes. The judgment also follows at least 30 instances of lynching across India sparked by a single WhatsApp rumour. This spate of mob violence injected the judgment with an undercurrent of urgency, as the court stressed the need to preserve the country’s “quintessentially secular ethos” and decried as “perverse” the act of civilians taking the law into their own hands.

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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