Supreme Court Agrees To Hear PIL Raising Alarm Over Mob Lynching ; Issues Notice To Union, States

A bench of Justices BR Gavai and JB Pardiwala sought the response of the Union home ministry and the police chiefs of all States today after Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing on behalf of the NFIW, insisted that invoking the jurisdiction of all the high courts would be futile. The senior counsel said:

“If Your Lordships tell me to go to the high court, nothing would happen. I would have to go to all these high courts. And what would [victims of mob lynching] get? Compensation of two lakhs after ten years. This is despite the [Tehseen Poonawalla] judgment. Where do we go? This is a very serious matter.”

“Issue notice,” Justice Gavai dictated, before telling Sibal, “So, you pre-empted our question.”

The senior counsel replied, “The last time you told me to go to the high court, so I knew this was going to happen.”

Background

The National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) has urged the top court to issue a mandamus to the concerned authorities to take immediate action “in terms of the findings and directions in Tehseen Poonawalla” to address the growing problem. In this connection, the petition refers to two recent incidents of Muslims being lynched by a mob over a suspicion of smuggling beef in Bihar's Saran and Nashik in Maharashtra; an alleged assault by the Bajrang Dal on a Muslim daily wage earner for transporting two cows; a violent attack, illegal detention, and humiliation of two Muslim men by an angry mob in Orissa's capital, Bhubaneshwar; and an attack on a bus carrying several Hajj pilgrims by a violent mob in Kota, Rajasthan. “These incidents of lynching and mob violence occurring in just the last two months, are but a few examples,” the NFIW has submitted.

The State machinery, the organisation has further alleged, has consistently failed to take adequate preventive and consequential action to curb the menace of lynching and mob violence. This is despite a ruling of the Supreme Court that the State has a 'sacrosanct duty' to protect its citizens from 'unruly elements' and 'perpetrators of orchestrated lynching and vigilantism'. The petition states:

“The positive duty of the State to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of all individuals and the primary responsibility of the State to foster a secular, pluralistic and multiculturalist social order, have been recognised by this Court in several judgments including in Tehseen Poonawalla. This court has also recognised its own constitutional duty to take a call to protect lives and human rights…The rampant rise in the incidents of lynching and mob violence is the natural consequence of the lack of adequate action by the State despite the detailed preventive, punitive and remedial measures that have been put in place by this court…The State authorities have abjectly failed in making any sincere attempts to tackle this menace and there seems to be no end in sight so far as such incidents are concerned.”

The petitioner has further submitted that the incidents of mob lynching and cow vigilantism should be seen as a result of the false propaganda against minorities which is spread by means of public events as well as on social media channels, news channels, and films. The petition states:

“A poison of general communal hate and divide has taken over large portions of the populace. This hatred is the precondition of crimes of lynching and mob violence. No adequate action seems to be forthcoming on the part of the State Authorities to curb this menace. In most cases, minimal action of merely registering FIRs is the only thing that is done by the authorities which seems to be more of a formality than any genuine initiation of the criminal machinery.”

Besides praying for a writ of mandamus seeking the enforcement of the Tehseen Poonawalla guidelines, the National Federation of Indian Women has also sought immediate relief for the lynching victims by asking for a portion of the total amount of compensation to be granted to the victims or their families immediately after the incident as 'interim compensation'. The petition adds:

“A minimum uniform amount, as deemed appropriate, may additionally be granted to the victims in addition to the amount that may be determined by the respective State authorities after taking into consideration factors such as nature of bodily injury, psychological injury, and loss of earnings including loss of opportunities of employment and education and expenses incurred on account of legal and medical expense.”

The petition has been filed on behalf of National Federation of Indian Women by Advocate Rashmi Singh through Advocate-on-Record Sumita Hazarika.

Case Details

National Federation of Indian Women v. Union of India & Ors. | Writ Petition (Civil) No. 719 of 2023

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