The Crime Of Mob Lynching: Misdiagnosis Of A Crime And Systematic Failure Of Its Redressal

Garima Singh, Research Scholar at Faculty of Law, University of Allahabad

The first issue from the above discussion clearly is with adopting a standard definition of “mob violence” or “mob lynching” - as there is no precise definition of either of these phrases. These terms do not have a presence under any of the Indian laws especially the penal law; nor is there any transnational legal policy practice that lends any definitional clarity to them.

In Tehseen Poonawala v. Union of India2, the Supreme Court defined lynching in broad terms, as “targeted violence and commission of offences affecting the human body and against private and public property by mobs under the garb of self-assumed and self-appointed protectors of law.”3 Interestingly, this definition reflects a strong 'rule of law' strain in the judgment, where the Court came down heavily on mobs that “took law into their own hands.” This definition of lynching speaks to a certain motivation on part of the alleged perpetrators, which is often found in the American legal and legislative history of laws against lynching4. For example, in the famous Dyer anti-lynching bill, the failed legislation that aimed to make lynching a federal offence in 1922, the prohibited “mob or riotous assemblage” was defined as “an assemblage composed of three or more persons acting in concert for the purpose of depriving any person of his life without authority of law as a punishment for or to prevent the commission of some actual or supposed public offense.” Emphatically, NCRB has not adopted this definition for data collection. The potential ‘definition’ of “mob violence” is equally if not more vague. It is not clear how mob violence is actually different from “rioting,” which is defined as violence by an unlawful assembly of five or more persons.