The concept of ‘Frontier Justice’ is as old as human
civilization itself. The mob becoming judges is not a newly emerged phenomenon.
It has a long and tragic past and almost predates recorded history. No part of
the globe can claim itself to be entirely untouched with this brutal phenomenon
of vigilante justice. Lynching had once become so rampant and pervasive in the United
States that one of the most prolific American writers Mark Twain had sarcastically
noted that “America had become the United States of Lyncherdom.” According to a
report by ‘Equal Justice Initiative’ around 4000 blacks were lynched in the
American South between the end of the civil war and World War II. In Lynch-Law, the first scholarly
investigation of lynching, written in 1905, author James E. Cutler stated that
lynching is a criminal practice which is peculiar to the United States. However, after observing an alarming rise in the vigilante
justice over a decade, I am of the opinion that this peculiarity is gradually
shifting to India, though not for similar reasons as that of the United States.
On January
24 this year, when the Nation was gearing up to celebrate the auspicious day of
adoption of its own Constitution, a maniacal mob was involved in lynching its
Constitutional values and sanctity. This day, a young man accused of robbing
and stabbing a truck driver was tied to an electric pole and beaten to death in
the capital city of India. On January 20, a furious mob chopped off a hand of a
bank robber in the capital city of Bihar, Patna. On January 6, another young
man was beaten to death in the Indian capital city by a frenzied crowd who
mistook him for an apple thief. On September 28, 2015 a religiously fanatic mob
lynched a man to death on the grapevine of eating beef in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh
which stormed the Nation. A month before this gruesome incident, on 2nd
of August 2015, three suspected cattle thieves were beaten to death in Dadri
itself. In another jaw dropping case in March 2015, a crowd of about 8000
people barged into the Central Jail of Dimapur,
dragged out an accused suspected of committing rape and beaten him to death. In
another ill-fated instance of jungle justice a psychotic crowd in Kaliabazar
village of West Bengal, mercilessly beaten a man to death accused of raping and
hanging a seven year old girl. In July 2015 a serial rapist killer was attacked
in Court premises when he was produced before a Delhi’s Court. In May 2015, an
angry mob lynched a man for allegedly beheading a 5 year old child. In October
2014, a lynch mob chopped off a male’s genitals who was caught trying to rape a
teenage girl in Ganganagar town of Rajasthan.
As per the statistics available
on the official website of ‘National Crime Record Bureau’ the riotous mobs
caused maximum injuries (41.7%) to the police personnel in the country in the
year 2014. These instances of jungle justice are only the tip of the iceberg as
most of these kind of mob actions which occur in the remote part of the country
go unreported.
Such an
unprecedented rise in vigilante justice indicates an alarming state of affairs
for the democracy of the country. This mob justice is certainly against the
quintessential spirit of rule of law, which if not stopped may put the nation’s
democracy in danger. In order to bring these ugly episodes to a total halt, the
reasons behind these incidents are required to be seriously looked into. One of
the major reasons for a mob taking law in its hands flows from the peoples’
perpetuating belief about the State’s incompetency in delivering justice to the
masses. The deep-naked corruption in the law enforcement agencies,
unprecedented delay in disposal of cases by the Judiciary, undue advantage to
the rich and dominant in the justice delivery system are among other reasons of
peoples’ complete loss of trust in the system. This horrific situation is certainly
a high time to introspect blatant failure of Criminal justice delivery system
in the country. It is true that a nation can’t be run on emotionally driven
mob’s idea of justice but it is equally true that a violent mob doesn’t
understand the principle of Audi Alteram Partem as well.
Therefore, the bigger responsibility lies on the State’s machinery to rebuild trust in its citizenry that everyone is equal before law and that each and
every offender shall be brought to justice. It is in the interest of the State
to maintain trust in its people if it doesn’t want the ‘State of Nature’ to
prevail in society otherwise the Status Quo of jungle justice is
hardly going to change.
Note: The picture used on this blog has been taken from Internet with due credit to its owner.
