Social activists and student leaders in Delhi on Monday launched a campaign urging the government to introduce a law against mob lynching amid an increase in the number of such incidents in the country.
Columnist Tehseen Poonawalla, social activist and lawyer Jignesh Mevani, Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora , and the former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar have set up a committee to work on the draft legislation, which they intend to present in Parliament.
They are also believed to have initiated dialogue with state governments and Opposition leaders. The group plans to complete the draft by July 11, a year after seven members of a Dalit family were allegedly beaten up by a group of cow vigilantes for skinning a dead cow in Una town, Gujarat.
The draft calls for mob lynching to be made a non-bailable offence with a time-bound trial. Those convicted should get life imprisonment, according to them. If the police fail to control the situation, officers must be suspended immediately and a judicial or magisterial inquiry must be instituted, the draft says.
“All the families of victims of gau-raksha related lynchings, dairy farmers and cattle traders will go to PM’s house – not Jantar Mantar, not Ram Lila Maidan – and leave their cattle there. Let him take care of the cattle,” said Poonawalla. Mevani said they would organise protests across Gujarat as well.
“People are lynched in the name of Gau-mata, I was lynched in the name of Bharat Mata,” said Kanhaiya Kumar. “But if we do not protect the people, how will you protect the nation?”
Bollywood actor and JNU alumna Swara Bhaskar said, “People are at their lowest point when they engage in mob violence. And any society in which this is acceptable is at its lowest point too.” She also compared mob lynchers to bullies.
Members of the drafting committee include Sanjay Hegde, a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India, Sadar Musharraf, JNU student Najeeb Ahmed’s sister, Anil Chamariya, a journalist and activist, Apoorvanand, a Delhi University professor, Sanam Wazir, Campaigner at Amnesty International India, Nivedita Menon, a JNU professor, Rebecca John, a Senior Advocate, Manoj Jha, a professor at Delhi School of Social Work, V Geetha, a feminist author and publisher, and Swara Bhaskar.
Recently, a Whatsapp message about child kidnappers had caused widespread panic in Jharkhand. Instigated by the forward, villagers had turned violent and lynched seven men in Seraikela-Kharsawan, East Singhbhum and West Singhbhum districts of the state.
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