The return of vigilantism even in an apparently stray incident in Haryana emphasises the problem has not gone away though six to seven years have passed since it assumed the proportions of a social phenomenon in the mid-2010s.
Taking the law into their own hands, a group of people chased a car on a highway and shot indiscriminately at young people they assumed were cow smugglers, resulting in the death of a school student. The community the student belonged to is irrelevant but, in this case, the victim was not from a community which is usually targeted for cattle smuggling for its meat.
The continued operation of such vigilantism is a cause of anxiety as the mindset that once seemed to have the country’s cow belt in its thrall is a dangerous affront to not only to the rule of law but also to communal harmony that is threatened by discriminatory attitudes to the right to choice of food in the name of protecting cows.
Armed cow “rakshaks” must be dealt with by the law keeping forces before they strike out, but they seem to be part of a police information network encouraged to pass on information on suspicious activity. Instead of clamping down on vigilantism in any form, the law & order forces in some states are only patronising such activity.
There are laws to deal with the excesses of the vigilantes as in when they kill someone, but hardly are laws against their unlawful assembly ever used in time to curb their enthusiasm for nefarious doings, be it in threatening women in moral policing or enforcing the diktats of kangaroo courts, or killing in the name of protecting cows.
People cannot be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Preventing them from doing so is also the task of the police, weighed down as they are in their routines like maintenance of order in society. But, beyond the police, it is up to society to help bring down vigilantism of any kind and for that an enormous amount of inculcation of awareness is needed.
