Lynch law

It was an anonymous, cramped basti of about 250 homes in quiet Nagpur. It is the hotbed of extraordinary questions and spreading ambiguities since the day a mob of over 200 women surrounded and lynched Akku Yadav in an open court. He was, by all accounts, a serial rapist who had flaunted his immunity from the law for almost a decade. They say he didn8217;t spare even the 10 year old, or the pregnant woman. So, are the women who did their tormentor to death with stones, kitchen knives, chilli powder, the victims or accused? Should they be punished for taking the law into their own hands, or is it unfair to single them out 8212; or some of them, since only five were arrested and released on bail 8212; in what is, after all, a rotting criminal justice system? The system that allowed Yadav to roam unchecked for years would have probably set him free again to commit more heinous crimes.

These are questions that permit no instant or easy answers. Not everyone thinks so, of course 8212; not the battery of legal luminaries and women8217;s organisations and activists who have immediately and unambiguously rushed their sympathies and support to the women vigilantes of Kasturba Nagar. Yet, some things are easily said: the loud solidarity that has been on display towards the women in the lynch mob is a dangerous thing, it threatens to forge a social sanction for murder. It is true that the women8217;s ordeal was horrible and that a system of lax investigation machinery, poor forensic systems, embarrassing cross-examination procedures and delayed judicial verdicts is guilty. But a case cannot be made for victims to take the law into their own hands. More technically, the right to self defence that many are citing is certainly not applicable to the lynching of an accused in custody.

Perhaps the question from Nagpur must be reframed. It is not enough to ask whether or not the women at Kasturba Nagar are guilty. It is more important to ask whether we can indict them and go on as before. The message from Kasturba Nagar is clear and urgent. The criminal justice system must be reformed and it must be particularly sensitised to the victim who is a woman. The criminal-police nexus must be submitted to stricter scrutiny. The courts must deliver before justice delayed becomes justice denied.