Sir — This refers to the editorial, “No fear of the law” (December 11). An old english proverb says, “Give a dog a bad name and hang him.” It rips a very sinister design open. As the proverb suggests, it contains two actions in it — first criminalise a person and then kill him. Generally, social terrorists adopt this design to vilify a victim. It helps those terrorists who are actually the real criminals, look like the champions of public morality.
The modus operandi of this design can magically turn a helpless tribal widow into a witch; a lover into an intruder; a cobbler into a cattle smuggler; a person with non-Aryan features into a chinky/drug pedlar/cannibal etc.
It is more often than not, “hang him” gets replaced by “lynch him”. After the first act of giving the victim a bad name on the khap/kangaroo stage, the mob starts lynching the victim on the pretext of witch-hunting, honour-killing, cow-saving or criminal-bashing.
Kangaroo trials can now go on under the guise of social media and television channels. Therefore, it can no longer be called a street justice as it trespasses on our living rooms. However, it is true that though electronic media can malign a person but it cannot murder her/him on the spot. It can only give a person a bad name leaving the final job to hang him at the hands of a lynch mob that has been intoxicated by hate speeches.
The murder of a poor labourer, Afrajul Khan, was a combination of electronic and street kangaroo trial. According to the report, the killer got influenced by hate speeches and messages on social media. That snowballed to a street murder and again it got back to social media for further snowballing as the murder had been uploaded in electronic media. Generally, the poor, a labourer, a cobbler, a butcher, a hawker, are the most soft and easy prey of hate crimes. We need a total ban on hate speeches to protect our poor brothers and sisters from their becoming scapegoats at the hands of the vested interests and some TRP hungry market players.