Mob Lynching: Consequence of corrupt Police and Judiciary?

Last evening, I read a bone chilling news of lynching of an engineer in Karnataka. This was specially traumatic because engineer was employed at Google (my employer as well). But sadly this was not an isolated incident. We have been hearing news of mob taking law in its own hand from some time now. I am not sure when exactly did it started but I remember hearing about such incidents from my childhood. Actually I can connect this incident to stories I used to hear when I was kid that some people caught hold of a thief and beat him badly before handing him over to Police. One such example is shown in Movie Munna Bhai MBBS as well when Sunil Dutt caught hold of a pickpocketer and public started beating him. Finally he have to intervene as an old and wise person to save him.

Though some people and media argues that public lynchings in India have grown after 2014, there are enough reportings which disputes it and prove that there were enough examples of mob justice before 2014 as well. But I do not want to get into political or communal argument through this article. As I do not want to get into communal argument, I will focus on incidents where unknown individuals are targeted by people who do not have any preconceived ill will towards the victim as happened in this case.

Though it’s unadvisable to assume everything media reports as correct, but largely Karnataka incident happened in following sequence. Some people were passing through a village, there they saw a group of children and offered some Chocolates to them. Villagers developed a suspicion on them assuming visitors were part of child trafficking racket. An argument followed after which visitors ran fearing escalation but were caught in next village as their pics have been forwarded to next village using WhatsApp. Residents of next village caught the visitors and started beating them. Eventually they killed one of the visitors while 3 others were hospitalised. This incident is shocking and actually anybody can be victim of this kind of violence because we all travel and anybody can be suspected to be a child trafficker considering methods they use now a days.

Some people have blamed WhatsApp for this and many other incidents like this but I do not believe WhatsApp is in any way responsible for this. For a second let’s assume that the victims were not normal civilians but actual criminals and were not beaten but handed over to Police. (Due to times we live in, I will have to reiterate that I am in NO WAY blaming victims but just hypothesizing to prove that WhatsApp or any other technological platform just dissipates information, Its THE PEOPLE who consume the information in a certain way and commit crimes like this). It would have been a very good use of technology for law enforcement as happened in this case where a vigilante passenger noticed something wrong and informed authorities about it using Twitter, who acted and busted a human trafficking racket.

Being an optimist, I believe in general goodness of people and will give benefit of doubt to villagers who constituted the mob which killed this person. I believe, In hindsight even villagers are kicking themselves for doing what they did, as they are not hard core criminals but normal simple people who just was angry on that day and passionate about saving their children. But two wrong things definitely happened on that day

1. Villagers became suspicious about some visitors offering chocolates to children. Though it feels really bad that people in our country distrust fellow humans so much, but we have seen enough example of crime where all sorts of things happen and we still do not know fully the situation and some people can really be protective about kids. So to again giving benefit of doubt to villagers I am assuming that visitors unknowingly did something which led to suspicion in villagers mind that they were in their village to do something wrong.
2. Instead of informing law enforcement agencies, villagers decided to do justice themselves and beat those suspicious visitors themselves. Now there can not be any explanation for this. In almost all the incidences of mob violence, this mob urge to do justice then and there is present. It may be a case of stolen cattle or beef eating, mob isolates a group of person believing they committed a crime and punishes them. I believe this kind of behavior is rooted in deep distrust towards our law enforcement agencies including Judiciary. There is a legitimate perception that our police and our judiciary do not punish the guilty in a timely manner but actually harasses the complainant and due to this people fear going to police and even when they do, they do not have much hope that police will be able to get them justice. On top of it we have a judiciary which is biased towards the criminals. Bias is hopeless if criminals have money or influence (which can be bought using money). This distrust or trust in incompetency of law enforcement agencies work 2 ways. First there is no incentive to take matters to police. So in this example, If police will not do anything as these child traffickers must have already paid money to them why even bother calling them. Let’s beat the heck out of them so that they learn their lessons. Second there is an impunity associated with crowd because hundred people means influence of four- five hundred votes, which is enough for local politicians to derail police investigations after a mob crime have been committed. So again coming to this case, because we are hundred people we can just beat these visitors up and anyway it’s not just me who is doing so. There are also Psychological aspects which bring out the worst in people when they are acting in mob

I think mob lynching in cases like this is an ugly consequence of poor and corrupt law enforcement (again including judiciary). Its high time Indian police and Judiciary do something to gain confidence of people otherwise cases like this will only increase. As citizen on India, we can contribute by not asking clemency for mob criminals whether they are stone pelters of J&K or fellow supporters of a convicted Baba who committed arson as by doing so, we just increase the feeling of impunity of mob.