A video clip of Rajkumar's ordeal has been circulating on social media, showing his perpetrators tearing off clumps of his hair.

The girl apparently called the boy, named Rajkumar, to visit her at her village in Tara Nagar, which is when a mob comprising her family members got hold of him, stripped him half-naked, beat him up, shaved his hair and pulled off his toe nails.

A 25-year-old man was beaten and tortured in Rajasthan's Churu district by family members of a girl with whom he allegedly had an affair.

. @PMOIndia need a law to #StopMobLynching .This man in Rajasthan, being lynched, his hair pulled out of his skull, nails pulled out coz 1n pic.twitter.com/GhIaXyT25p

The police, who say the incident happened on 1 June, have booked 7 people in connection with the crime. Initially, Rajkumar's parents had not reported the matter to the police but once the video surfaced and went viral, the police tracked them down and his elder brother filed an FIR.

Rajkumar was ultimately rescued by villagers and admitted to a private hospital in Jaipur where he is undergoing treatment in the intensive care unit.

Across India, incidents of mob lynching are on the rise. Whether it is in the name of protecting cows or punishing what they view as transgressions, people are taking the law in their hands instead of reporting matters to law enforcement authorities.

The most infamous mob lynching in recent times was perhaps that of Mohammed Akhlaq in Dadri on the unfounded suspicion that he had stolen and slaughtered a calf.

In 2016, Mazlum Ansari and Imteyaz Ali who were on their way to a cattle market in Jharkhand to sell 8 oxen were beaten to death by a mob and hanged from a tree. Earlier this year, two brothers in Jharkhand were lynched to death by a frenzied mob which accused them of being child lifters.

In another incident in Jharkhand, Mohammed Naeem, a cattle trader by profession, was lynched to death. Photographs of his last moments, bloodied and beaten up, begging for mercy created an uproar on social media.

On 1 April this year, Pehlu Khan was beaten to death in Alwar, Rajasthan, by a mob for being a 'cattle smuggler'. He was transporting cows to his dairy farm.

Back in 2015, a mob of 7,000 to 8,000 people broke into a prison in Dimapur, Nagaland, and dragged out a man who had been arrested on suspicion of rape. The man was stripped naked, paraded and beaten to death.

Many are blaming the prevailing political climate for the spurt in cases of vigilante justice and lynching, with complete disregard for the law of the land. Social activists are now demanding strict laws against mob lynchings.

Recently, members of the the National Campaign Against Mob Lynching (NCAML) have set up a drafting committee to prepare the blueprint for a law against lynching.

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