india

Updated: Jul 26, 2019 22:53 IST

The Supreme Court issued notices to the Centre and 11 states on a petition seeking implementation of the apex court’s July 2018 directions on guidelines to prevent incidents of mob lynching.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi also issued notice to the National Human Rights Commission and the Union Ministry of Law and Justice on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a Delhi-based NGO, Anti-corruption Council of India Trust.

The petitioner contended before the bench that lynchings are on the rise, especially in the garb of cow protection. “The angry mob is trying to become the final adjudicator by punishing the accused without even informing the police officials, and taking law into their hands,” claimed the petitioner.

The court agreed to hear the petition, although, as recently as last week, it refused to list a contempt petition on a similar issue. The contempt plea was moved by one of the parties on whose petition the court, last year listed out the preventive, remedial and punitive measures.

The fresh PIL said the spurt of violence has targeted the minority community and that cow vigilante groups claiming to be “protectors of cattle” have “taken the lives of many innocent Dalits and Muslims, merely on the suspicion of cow slaughtering”.

The petitioner wants the court to call for a status report from the respondent States on cases registered in instances of mob lynching. It also adds that the States must present an action-taken-report with regard to the directions issued in July 2018 by the top court.

The petitioner has also demanded that Parliament should frame a law to make mob lynching a non-bailable and non-compoundable offence and have a timebound trial in such cases. States must also be asked to evolve compensation scheme for victims in mob lynching cases, the petitioner submitted.

The SC, in its 2018 verdict, urged the Centre to come out with a legislation to curb mob lynching. The court emphasised then that crimes of mob lynching should be viewed in religion-neutral terms.

The extensive judgment called upon the State to act positively and responsibly to tackle the issue. Government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity repeated the government’s then position after the order — that the government doesn’t think a separate law is necessary and that most of the provisions are covered by the Indian Penal Code.

“The horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be permitted to inundate the law of the land. Earnest action and concrete steps have to be taken to protect the citizens from the recurrent pattern of violence which cannot be allowed to become ‘the new normal’,” the court said in its 2018 order.