The Supreme Court today on Friday gave the states a week’s time to submit their report on what measures have they taken to avert mob lynching. So far only nine states have filed in their replies to the Supreme Court. The apex court warned the rest of the states that their respective Home Secretaries will be summoned if they do not file the report within the stipulated time.
The Centre, during the hearing apprised the court that an empowered panel of ministers have been set up to take into consideration framing a law on mob lynching following the verdict of cow vigilantism.
The three-judge bench of Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud was hearing a plea filed by Tehseen Poonawala seeking initiation of contempt of proceedings against the officials of Rajasthan that include the Chief Secretary and chief of police for alleged violation of the Supreme Court verdict in the alleged lynching of dairy farmer Rakbar Khan on 20 July.
It was on 17 July, the top court stated, “horrendous acts of mobocracy” cannot be permitted to overrun the law of the land and issued a slide of guidelines for dealing with cow vigilantism and mob lynching.
It had then asked the Centre as well to take into consideration enacting a novel law to deal with such incidents.
The GoM comprises of Sushma Swaraj, External Affairs Minister, Nitin Gadkari, Transport Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad the Law Minister, and Thawar Chand Gehlot, the Social Justice and Empowerment Minister.
So far, 31 deaths have been reported due to lynching from nine states in the last one year.
The latest case was reported from Rajasthan’s Alwar, where a man named Akbar Khan was allegedly lynched by a group of villagers over suspicion that he was a cow smuggler.
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