A pan-Northeast legal group has sought a law to deal specifically with mob lynching.
This follows the killing of two people in Assam within a week in May.
“We have written to Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and brought to his notice that the State does not have a specific penal statue to deal with mob lynching as an offence,” said Debajit Barman, secretary-general of North East Legal Organization (NELO).
The Chief Minister, he added, was also requested to take the issue up with utmost urgency toward curbing the social menace at the earliest.
A mob had lynched 23-year-old Debasish Gogoi on May 29 in eastern Assam’s Jorhat district after a two-wheeler he was on had skid and hit two women in the Gabharu Parbat Tea Estate close to the border with Nagaland.
Thrashed to death
A similar incident happened on May 23 after a bicycle-borne vegetable vendor named Sanatan Deka allegedly grazed a vehicle at Monahkuchi village near Kamrup district’s Hajo, about 35 km northwest of Guwahati. Five men thrashed him to death.
Mob-lynching cases have been increasing day by day, the NELO said.
The first such case that caused social outrage was that of 16-year-old Jhankar Saikia who was lynched by auto-rickshaw operators at Diphu in 2013. He was killed following a quarrel over ₹10.