On Tuesday, Union Home Minister of India, Rajnath Singh said that the government will enact a law, if necessary, to curb incidents of lynching, after uproar over recent mob lynching incidents, the recent one being in Alwar, Rajasthan.
While responding to criticism, Singh said the government has taken the issue seriously.
A high-level committee has been set up, headed by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba, for checking cases of ‘mob lynching’. The government of India said that the recommendations from the committee would arrive in 4 weeks.
It stated that a Group of Ministers (GoM), headed by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will consider the report of the committee and submit its recommendations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Earlier, NDTV revealed on Sunday that Rakbar Khan, who was beaten by a mob on suspicion of cow smuggling in Rajasthan’s Alwar was in police custody for over 3 hours before he was taken to the hospital for treatment. The victim was travelling along Akbar Khan, who was beaten to death on the spot by the mob.
Reportedly, the police arranged for transport for the cows, visited the police station which was not far from the hospital and has a cup of tea before getting medical help, by which time he had already died.
The police said that 28-year-old Rakbar Khan died “on way to hospital”. They have charged three arrested from Alwar’s Lallawandi village with murder.
After the report, the investigation was transferred to a senior police officer, Hemant Priyadarshi who said they would look into why it took so long for the victim to get medical attention.
Congress President, Rahul Gandhi, tweeted about the incident.
Policemen in #Alwar took 3 hrs to get a dying Rakbar Khan, the victim of a lynch mob, to a hospital just 6 KM away.
Why?
They took a tea-break enroute.
This is Modi’s brutal “New India” where humanity is replaced with hatred and people are crushed and left to die. https://t.co/sNdzX6eVSU
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) July 23, 2018
On suspicion of cow smuggling, on Friday night, a 28 year old man was beaten to death at Alwar in Rajasthan. The victim was identified as Akbar Khan.
The villagers of Ramgarh spotted two men transporting cows on foot and attacked them. One of them died on the spot. The police have launched an investigation into the matter and stated that it is unclear if those two were cow smugglers.
“Akbar Khan, a resident of Kolgaon in Haryana, and another man were taking two cows to their village through a forest area near Lalawandi village in Alwar last night, when a group of people severely thrashed Khan,” said Subhash Sharma, the officer at Ramgarh police station.
On 4th July, Chief Justice of India Deepak Mishra said Cow vigilantism was not acceptable and it was the responsibility of the states to prevent this. The Supreme Court also warned against linking religion to mob violence saying, ‘a victim is a victim’.
“Nobody can take law into their own hands. It is the obligation of the state’s to see these incidents are prevented,” the SC stated.
The three-judge bench also dubbed cow vigilantism as mob violence, but reserved its verdict on compensation to victims and fixing responsibility.
