Supreme Court Acts on Mob Lynching, Cow Vigilantism

New Delhi: The Supreme Court asked various state governments to notify it in six weeks of the action taken in incidents of mob lynching and cow vigilantism. Taking note of the submissions of the parties, a bench of Justices B.R. Gavai, Aravind Kumar, and Sandeep Mehta posted the matter for further hearing after six weeks.

The top court was hearing on Tuesday a plea filed by the National Federation of Indian Women, an organisation linked to the CPI, seeking directions to the states to take immediate action in consonance with a 2018 verdict of the apex court to effectively deal with incidents of lynching and mob violence against Muslims by cow vigilantes.

“We find that most of the states have not filed their reply affidavits to the writ petition giving instances of mob lynching. It was expected of the states to at least respond to what action has been taken in such cases. We grant six weeks to the states that have not filed their replies and also give details of steps taken by them in such cases,” the bench said in its order.

The Supreme Court had issued notices last year to the Centre and the police chiefs of Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Haryana seeking their responses to the plea.

During the hearing, advocate Nizam Pasha, representing the petitioner organisation, said that in Madhya Pradesh there was an incident of alleged mob lynching but the FIR was registered for cow slaughter against the victims.

Following Pasha’s submission, the bench questioned the counsel appearing for the Madhya Pradesh government, as to how FIR for cow slaughter was registered without chemical analysis of the meat and why no FIR was registered against those involved in the scuffle.

“Are you trying to save someone? How can you register FIR for cow slaughter without even chemical analysis,” the bench told the counsel for Madhya Pradesh and asked him to give details of the incident.

Pasha said, “The states are denying that there were any incident of mob lynching and FIRs are being registered for cow slaughter against the victims. Only two states Madhya Pradesh and Haryana have filed their affidavit on incidents pointed out in the writ petition and interlocutory applications but other states have not filed any affidavit.”

The apex court had earlier issued a set of directions to the states to check incidents of cow vigilantism and mob lynching.

Senior Advocate Archana Pathak Dave, representing one of the states, said that in the writ petition, there is a specific averment made that Muslim men are mob lynched and there is no mention of mob lynching of people of other religions. “The relief sought cannot be religion specific,” she contended.

The bench asked Dave to observe restraint in her submissions, and said, “Let’s not go into the incidents on the basis of religion. We should focus on the larger cause.”