The Supreme Court on Monday said it would hear on August 20 a petition seeking contempt action against Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh governments in the Alwar lynching case, ANI reported. The petition was filed by advocate Indira Jaising days after a man was allegedly lynched in Rajasthan’s Alwar district on the suspicion of smuggling cows, Live Law reported. The police have arrested three men.
The grounds for the contempt action plea is non-compliance of the Supreme Court’s directions to curb mob lynching.
This comes a week after the court told Parliament that mobocracy cannot be allowed in society and asked it to consider creating a new penal provision to deal with incidents of vigilantism. The bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had decried cases of lynching and cow vigilantism.
In April 2017, 55-year-old Pehlu Khan died of injuries he sustained during an attack by a group of cow vigilantes in Alwar. Five months later, suspected cow vigilantes in the district shot dead 35-year-old Ummar Khan while he was transporting cows from Alwar to Bharatpur.
On July 3, the top court had said that it was up to the states to prevent incidents of cow vigilantism. In September 2017, the Supreme Court had directed the Centre and state governments to take urgent steps to curb such attacks. The court had asked each state to appoint a senior police official to serve as the nodal officer in each district to ensure that such incidents do not take place.
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