Twenty-seven and counting.
Although the figures are not precise, more than two dozen persons have been lynched by mobs across the country in little more than two months, since May 8.
The attacks began earlier though. From early March, villages in Tiruvallur, Kanchipuram, Villupuram, Tiruvannamalai districts in Tamil Nadu witnessed a series of incidents in which migrant labourers were attacked by locals who thought that they were child lifters. Behind these seemingly irrational fears were rumours spread over WhatsApp that 200 child traffickers/criminals had entered Tamil Nadu and were planning to kidnap children.
The second victim was 65-year-old woman Rukmini, beaten to death by 200 people at Athimoor village in Polur taluk in Tiruvannamalai on May 9 after they mistook her and four family membes for child kidnappers. The woman, a Malaysian national, and her relatives had travelled to the village in search of their ‘kuladeivam’ (family deity) temple.
Less than 24 hours later, in Pulicat near Chennai, a mob lynched a mentally ill person who was assumed to be a child lifter. The villagers then hanged his body from a newly built bridge.
The mob attacks have continued, despite steps taken by police, with two labourers from Bihar brutally assaulted on July 2 in the heart of Chennai.
In Maharasthra, the attacks have been particularly heinous. While no clear figures are forthcoming, police told The Hindu that there had been at least a dozen cases of assault and murder by mobs reported across the State since June.
In Dhule five persons from a nomadic community were bludgeoned to death on suspicion of being child-lifters. Bharat Shankar Bhosale, his brother Dadarao Bhosale, Raju Bhosale, Bharat Malwe and Anagu Ingole — all from Solapur’s Mangalvedhe tehsil – were beaten to death with sticks and other blunt objects in the tribal hamlet of Rainpada by a frenzied mob of 4000 strong after one of them was allegedly seen talking to a minor girl.
All five were members of the nomadic Nath Gosavi community who had been on the road for more than six months before they reached Rainpada. Disturbing clips of the incident have surfaced, which shows even minors participating in the murderous act.
According to the Pimpalner police, Whatsapp posts had been doing the rounds for a while with gruesome images warning against child-traffickers. Dhule Superintendent of Police M. Ramkumar said a couple of policemen were also injured in the mob violence.
Earlier on June 29, in an eerie foreshadowing of the Dhule incident, three labour contractors from Pandharpur narrowly escaped being lynched in Nandurbar’s district’s tribal-dominant Mhaswad village. One of the victims was a former municipal councillor in the Pandharpur Municipal Council.
“As labour in Nandurbar is cheap, contractors from Western Maharashtra often come here to recruit labourers here. In this case, one of the three men stopped to ask a small girl for directions, which led to wildfire rumours that the men were child-lifters,” said Sanjay Patil, SP, Nandurbar. He said that rumours had been rife in Mhaswad a week before the incident.
A 2000 strong mob laid siege to the Innova SUV in which the men were travelling. The trio were dragged out and beaten and their vehicle torched. A police team managed to save them, said Mr. Patil.
Two persons from the nomadic Pardhi community — Bharat Sonavane and Shivaji Shinde — were beaten to death and six others injured by a mob of 300 in Chandgaon village in Aurangabad district’s Vaijapur tehsil on suspicion of being robbers.
The police said fake social media posts about alleged midnight attacks and thefts in villages in Vaijapur taluka days before the incident had led villagers to patrol their homes at night. Some village elders in Chandgaon say, sustained dread over these theft rumours led to the killings of the Pardhi community members.
On June 8, an autorickshaw driver in his mid-50s, Tanaji Sonawane, had a close brush with death after locals in Halgara village mercilessly thrashed him after a rumour spread that he was a child-lifter.
“Owing to the strike called by the State Transport authorities, Sonawane was ferrying passengers to Chichondi village. While returning, he was chased by motorcycle-borne youths on suspicion of being a child lifter,” said Anil Kurundkar, the assistant police inspector of Nilanga police station who rushed with his team and rescued the rickshaw driver.
Sonawane, who panicked and sought refuge in a house in Halgara village, was dragged out by a mob of 1500 persons and was on the verge of being burnt alive. His autorickshaw was torched.
“The two main reasons for attacking hapless drifters of the nomadic community are suspicion of theft or child lifting. At times the rumours spread through word-of-mouth, at times through the bane of social media. This keeps a community in a perpetual state of tension,” said G.G. Ranjankar, Deputy Suprintendent of Police, Latur (Nilanga).
“So taut is the tension, that it often translates into violent and irrational action the moment any strangers enter a town or village,” he said.
“There appears to be a total loss of reason here, aggravated perhaps by a loss of trust in the law and justice redressal mechanisms. In each of these incidents, residents either assaulted or killed persons who were total strangers, with whom they had no prior enmity,” said Dr. Hamid Dabholkar, convener of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS).
Not always.
Two adventure-loving Assamese friends — Goa-based sound engineer Nilotpal Das and Guwahati-based businessman Abhijeet Nath — where bludgeoned to death at Panjuri Kacharigaon in central Assam’s Karbi Anglong district on June 8. The two had gone to a picnic spot at Kangthilangso in the district and on their way back, drove into a mob of about 250 villagers who took them for child-lifters. The mob was particularly severe on Nilotpal who sported long, matted hair. The police later found a local man had taken advantage of the fear psychosis to plan the lynching as he had an axe to grind with the duo.
To combat random violence and mob lynchings, the MANS has been running a campaign across Maharashtra for several months titled ‘Against Violence, Towards Humanity’.
In Assam, there were at least half a dozen more cases, but a drive against social media misuse and community consultations by the police helped prevent loss of lives. Since the Nilotpal-Abhijeet lynching case, the police have been targeting weekly rural markets — for maximum impact, as people of several villages usually gather in these markets or 'haats' — to campaign against rumours and fake news. The police have also been organising community consultations at educational institutions involving students, parents and teachers to combat the social media menace.
On June 29, a mob in Katani village in Assam’s Sonitpur district tied a woman to a pole and thrashed her. But some villagers intervened and informed the police, who rescued the woman and admitted her in the hospital.
The last of such cases was reported from Daipam area in Darrang district on July 1. A group of villagers rescued a 17-year-old schizophrenia patient before others could thrash him to death.
