Lynchings spur Govt into action

GoM set up to suggest steps to effectively deal with mob violence

The spate of lynchings in the country, latest being that in in Alwar, has prodded the Government into taking measures on Monday. The Centre set up a Home Minister-headed Group of Ministers (GoM) and a Home Secretary-headed committee to suggest ways and legal framework to effectively deal with incidents of mob violence and lynchings, even as it sought a report from the Rajasthan Government.

The Supreme Court, for its part, decided to hear a contempt plea against the Rajasthan Government over the issue on August 20. The Centre’s move also comes against the backdrop of the apex court asking it to frame laws to tackle mobocracy, and with the Monsoon Session in Parliament going on, the Centre is in line of Opposition fire over the rise in such incidents.

The panel headed by Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba will suggest measures and legal framework to effectively deal with incidents of mob violence. The committee will submit its recommendations to the Home Minister Rajnath Singh-headed GoM within four weeks. The GoM, in turn, will submit its recommendations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In an impromptu intervention at the end of the day’s sitting, Singh told the Lok Sabha that the panel will give its report in 15 days.

In Parliament and outside, while the Congress took on the BJP with its president Rahul Gandhi saying hatred had replaced humanity in Modi’s “brutal” ‘New India’, the BJP and the Government hit back terming the Gandhi scion a “merchant of hate”.

Union Ministers Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Thawarchand Gehlot will be the members of the GoM. And the secretaries of the justice, legal affairs, legislative, and social justice and empowerment departments are members of the committee.

The Rajasthan police too set up a high-level committee to probe the allegations of delay against the Alwar police in taking lynching victim Akbar Khan to hospital after he was allegedly attacked by a group of people on the suspicion of cow smuggling.

It will also be probed whether 28-year-old Akbar, alias Rakbar Khan, became a victim of police beating on the intervening night of last Friday and Saturday. Appropriate action would be taken if any lapses were found in the enquiry report, the Rajasthan DGP said.

The latest incident took place a little more than a year after Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, was lynched by cow vigilantes in Alwar itself when he was transporting cattle to his village in Haryana on April 1, 2017. The mob suspected that Pehlu was smuggling cows. He died on April 3, two days after the incident. As per reports and Opposition allegations, over the past year, several such lynchings have taken place in Alwar.

“Policemen in Alwar took 3 hours to get a dying Rakbar, the victim of a lynch mob, to a hospital just 6 km away. Why? They took a tea-break enroute. This is Modi’s brutal ‘New India’ where humanity is replaced with hatred and people are crushed and left to die,” Congress president Rahul Gandhi wrote on twitter.

Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Smriti Irani took on Rahul for his comments. “Stop jumping with joy every time a crime happens, Mr Rahul Gandhi. The State has already assured strict and prompt action. You divide society in every manner possible for electoral gains and then shed crocodile tears. Enough is enough. You are a merchant of hate,” Goyal tweeted.

His remark echoed the attack on the then Gujarat Chief Minister Modi by then Congress chief Sonia Gandhi during the 2007 Gujarat Assembly election campaign when she used the phrase “maut ka saudagar” (merchant of death).

Irani accused Rahul of doing “vulture politics” and claimed that not a single instance goes by where he doesn’t attempt to “rupture” social bonds for electoral gains.  She further alleged that Rahul’s family presided over the worst form of hate in 1984, Bhagalpur, Nellie and many other instances.

The incident also rocked the Lok Sabha where last week too during the No Confidence Motion debate several Opposition leaders had attacked the Modi regime on increasing instances of mob lynching across the country ever since NDA came to power.

Congress member Karan Singh Yadav raised the issue on Monday during Zero Hour prompting BJP members to protest. Karan alleged that it was the fourth such incidents in the State and alleged that those who claimed to be ‘gau-rakshak’ (cow protectors) are behind this murder.