Cracking its whip against rising incidents of mob violence, the Supreme Court on Tuesday asked Parliament to create a separate law to deal with lynching offenders. Condemning lynching incidents across India, the Supreme Court said lynching has to be dealt with as a special and separate offence, and recommended enactment of law in this regard.
Coming down heavily on mob lynchings, a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said the "horrendous acts of mobocracy" cannot be allowed to become a new norm in the country. "Citizens cannot take the law into their hands or become law unto themselves," the Supreme Court said in a sharply worded judgement.
Issuing detailed guidelines to tackle the mob culture in India, the Supreme Court asked the Centre and state governments to file a compliance report on the apex court's directions to prevent and punish lynching. The bench asked the Centre and state governments to take preventive, punitive and remedial measures to stop lynching incidents in the future.
The Supreme Court had, on July 3, reserved its verdict on pleas seeking directions to formulate guidelines to curb such violence, saying no one can take the law into their hands.
The Supreme Court passed the order on petitions by filed by, inter alia, Congress leader Tehseen Poonawalla and Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, in view of the rising instances of cow vigilantism. However, the Supreme Court on Tuesday seems to have extended its judgement on mob lynchings in general and not specific to cow vigilantism.