SC calls for new law to fight ‘mobocracy’

VIGIL ON VIGILANTISM Court wants quick trials, higher punishment for convicts

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court asked Parliament to come up with an anti-lynching law to tackle cow vigilantism and lynch mobs even as it laid down preventive, remedial, and punitive measures against the backdrop of a spate of such incidents across the country.

The measures laid down by the court also include steps to tackle hate speeches, provocative statements and fake news, usually the precursor to attacks by lynch mobs. There have been more than 20 lynchings since May.

“Horrendous acts of mobocracy” can’t be allowed, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud said.

The bench added that “extrajudicial” acts such as “cow vigilantism” should be nipped in the bud.

The bench was hearing a bunch of petitions that sought action against attacks by selfstyled cow vigilantes, but its observation is also relevant — and perhaps in light of — a spate of mob lynchings targeting people believed to be child snatchers, usually on the basis of false information passed on through messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.

The attacks in recent weeks prompted the government to write to Facebook Inc, the owner of WhatsApp. It also prompted the company to take out full-page advertisements on fake messages and news and to introduce a button to show a message had been forwarded.

Over the weekend, a 32-year old Google employee was attacked and killed in Karnataka’s Bidar on the belief that he was a child snatcher.

“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 State cannot turn a deaf ear to the growing rumblings of its people,” the bench said.