In yet another case of mob lynching, an innocent woman was killed on suspicion of being a childlifter in Madhya Pradesh's Singrauli.
Police said the 30-year-old woman, reportedly mentally unstable, was homeless and roaming in Badghat village in Morba police station area of Singrauli. She was noticed by a few youths in the village who gathered the public on Saturday night. On being declared a child-lifter, the villagers pounced upon her and the mob beat her mercilessly until she died. Later, when people realised that they have killed a mentally unsound woman, they dumped her body in a canal adjacent to a nursery of the forest department.
The dead body was recovered the next day. Police, including Singrauli SP Riyaz Iqbal, reached the spot and instituted a probe into the matter. Police said they have detained six people, including youths, who were responsible for parading the woman.
Earlier, a similar incident had happened in Singrauli when a government forest staff was attacked by a mob on suspicion of being a child-lifter. The rising number of cases of mob lynching and rumours of child-lifters have alarmed the police in the region that shares its boundary with Uttar Pradesh.
The fresh case of lynching comes in the backdrop of a slew of similar incidents reported from across the country. Early this month, a techie was killed in Karnataka after rumours spread that he and his friends were child-lifters. In June, two youths were beaten to death by a mob on suspicion of being child-lifters in Assam. As recently as last week, a 28-year-old youth was killed by a mob in Rajasthan's Alwar on suspicion of smuggling cows.
Last week, the Supreme Court had asked Parliament to frame a law to tackle the rising number of lynching cases in the country. 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.