Trigger warning: distressing descriptions of mob violence, public harassment and police brutality
Since 2014, India has seen a steep rise in incidents of mob lynching. Every time an incident happens, the public comes up with demands of stringent punishment for the convicts of mob lynching.
But the question is who are the convicts of mob lynchings? Are they always persons with previous criminal records? Or can they be individuals far more ordinary or commonplace to our daily social settings?
On the night of 28 August 2019, at around 9 PM, I was almost lynched by a mob of well qualified men in the heart of Jaipur.
While passing by a table inside a restaurant near Rangoli Plaza in Vaishal Nagar, two men seating there called me to ask my name. When I obliged, they refused to believe me and alleged that I look Muslim with my long beard and must be faking my identity as a Hindu. They also refused to believe my passport as the photo in it was not bearded.
A mob of 15-20 people gathered around me and started enquiring my religious faith by frisking me to detect some Hindu thread in my body. When they failed to find one, they started heckling me, demanding that I chant some Hindu Mantras, another test that I failed. They wasted little time in stripping me naked to check if I have a circumcised penis. The even filmed the entire incident.
The mob was brutally hitting me and alleged that I was a Pakistani terrorist with a plan and hence, faking my identity. They even alleged that my Hindi is heavily accented and hence I may be a Kashmiri citizen. They checked my work diary and found a few pieces of information collected from the NCRB website (I was working in the prison systems of India back then). They said these data confirm my identity as a terrorist with a plan.
I was helpless and was anxiously waiting for the police to come and rescue me. All of this was happening under the surveillance of CCTV cameras installed in the restaurant.
Someone from the mob suggested that they should stop hitting me and call the cops instead. The police arrived and without a question held me by my belt and took me to Karni Vihar Police Station in Jaipur (West). The mob was chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and then followed the cops to the Police Station.
The Thana in-charge, without giving me a chance to keep my side, kept hitting me while asking me my real name. I was calm and was continuously pitching my Passport to him, which he refused to see.
All of this was happening in the presence of the men who were the part of the mob that attacked me. One of them tried filming the way I was thrashed by the policeman, to which a lower level police guard interrupted, saying that human rights activists would create a ruckus out of the video. He made him delete the footage.
A First Information Report (FIR) was filed against me under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Section 107/16 and I was asked to sign it. I refused, as I was not allowed to put my side and I was the victim of an attack by a mob. But the policemen thrashed me again and made me sign the FIR forcefully.
I was constantly requesting them to let my office authorities know about my detention, a plea that they plainly denied. I was stripped off my clothes and was lodged thrown into the lock-up at around 11 PM on the night of 28 August.
At dawn break, I resumed requesting the police to inform my office, which they refused to do till 4 pm of the next day.
My production at the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s (CJM) court was scheduled after 4 pm and hence, the assigned constable allowed me to interact with my office authorities over the phone so that I can apply for a bail. My office authorities were equally devastated at my ordeal. This call revealed the details of the atrocities I had been facing to my office.
I was produced at the CJM court. The CJM plainly announced a sentence, without giving me a chance to keep my side. But then the policemen who accompanied me received a call, and along with it, an order to produce me at the office of Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), West Jaipur.
Upon reaching the DCP’s office, I came to know that the Director General of Police (DGP) had assigned a team for my rescue. I was taken to the venue by the DCP, CCTV footage was collected and the perpetrators were apprehended based on an FIR lodged by me. Section 323, 341, 143, and 67A of the IPC were slapped.
FIR (607/29.8.2019) filed b… by Eleventh Column on Scribd
I was easily pulled out of this mess as I was working in a privileged position. But, this incident shows the sheer apathy of the government over the rising hardliner Hindu sentiments amongst common Indians.
A culture of violence
The culture of lynching in India is not new. The numbers have grown up steeply post 2014. As per IndiaSpend, 25 Indians were killed in 60 incidents related to bovine issues in nearly eight years (2010-2017). 97% of these attacks were reported after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, came to power in May 2014.
What is more alarming is public outrage premised on sheer blood lust for fellow human beings. Lynching, thus, is a heinous crime that is a result of deep-seated hatred against fellow members of the society. Be it the painful screams of mercy by Pehlu Khan, Tabrez Ansari, or Abhijeet Nath and Nilotpal Bora, or the CCTV footages showing how heinous a human can be in the recent lynching of Rituparna Pegu in Guwahati – all are equally devastating and revolting.
How is this crime going to end? Is there a specific power dynamic within this issue? Who are the convicts and the potential convicts? These questions need to be mulled over.
The Oxford Dictionary defines lynching as ‘the illegal killing of somebody, usually by hanging, by a crowd of people and without a trial’.
The perpetrators of this crime come from a huge spectrum – they were cow vigilantes in the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq, Mustain Abbas or Pehlu Khan, while he was a professional criminal in the case of Abhi and Neel. In the recent case of lynching of Rituparna Pegu in Assam, the perpetrators were a group of migrant workers from the same family without any previous criminal history.
Who were the ones apprehended in my attack? Did they have any previous criminal record? No.
As per conversation with their family members after they were arrested, I came to know that one of the accused was an engineer by profession working for an IT firm, one an MBA in Marketing, and another the owner of a posh parlour. Others included a High Court Lawyer, a student pursuing his studies in Australia, a businessman, service holders, and many more. They were flaunting their professional identities while attacking me.
A potential convict is amongst all of us. While demanding stringent punishment for mob lynchings, we fail to address the potential convict within us.
At the heart of mob lynchings is – hatred. This hatred can be religious, cultural, socioeconomic, or of any other form. In the Lynching cases of Akhlaq, Mustain or Pehlu, the mob carried an ingrained religious hatred for a particular community; in the case of Abhijeet and Nilotpal, the mob was steeped in hatred for cross-cultural intersections, and in the latest lynching case of Rituparna Pegu, the hatred came from a continuous exposure of machismo and violence around us.
We celebrate a culture of violence. It is glorified in our daily lives through exposure to various media. Some researchers argue that teenagers exposed to violent video games and other such media turn out to be more aggressive and brutal.
Judicial dormancy
Unfortunately, the Indian judiciary, instead of proactively reining in the mob lynching impulses in Indian society, has often encouraged them by omission or commission. Only in July 2018, after dozens of lynching cases, did the Supreme Court of India finally urge the Parliament to draft penal provisions against such crimes. Barring those by a few state governments, no anti-lynching law has been drafted yet.
Moreover, by giving death sentences to satisfy the “collective conscience” of the citizens, the Indian judiciary has often legitimised or contended to a popular-level impulse of hatred and deadly vengeance. In reality, the collective conscience of Indian society is brimming with hatred and lust for the blood of fellow human beings.
Be it the brutal mob lynching cases mentioned earlier, the Hyderabad extrajudicial killing of last year, or the hanging of Afzal Guru and Dhananjay Chatterjee – time and again, instances of retributive justice have satisfied the “collective conscience” of the Indian society.
In a culture where violence is glorified under the veil of sheer casteism, classism, communalism, and patriarchy, mob lynching becomes normal. Outraging against the convicts out of sheer hatred against a particular caste, class, gender, or religious group in no way reduces our potentiality to be the next perpetrator of mob lynching.
Thus, while walking out in the marches demanding stringent punishments for the convicts of mob lynching, we also need to address the deeper issues that have been inciting minds to become so heinous. I was about to be mob lynched. But still, I question the validity of convicting the perpetrators as a definitive means of reining in incidents of mob lynching in India.
Were they conditioned to hate a particular community? Were they made to believe that lynching a Muslim is a way to display their nationalism? Are their greater forces that need to deal with proper discussion rather than sentencing stringent punishments? Does the Judiciary need to introspect on the way they have been largely dormant in reining in the hatred?
I sign out with these questions to ponder upon.
Views expressed are the author’s own.
Featured image (representational): A street in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India | Photo: William Muzi, Flickr
works as an educator and rights activist, and is currently based in Northeast India. He has worked in various conflict zones in India on a range of issues.
