The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Rajasthan Government to explain how an incident of lynching took place in the State days after a verdict was delivered asking the police and State machinery to be alert in preventing such incidents.
Dealing with a contempt application moved by Tehseen Poonawala, the original petitioner who filed PIl to curb lynching, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud directed the Principal Secretary (Home) in the Rajasthan Government to state what action had been taken against the errant police officers who wasted time to move the victim to the hospital that resulted in his death. A dairy farmer Rakbar Khan was lynched by a mob in Alwar under the belief that he was taking cattle for slaughter. The incident took place on July 20, three days after SC delivered its verdict.
On the larger issue of preparedness of other states to tackle similar incidents, the bench directed all state governments to file compliance reports based on the directions issued in its July 17 decision by September 7. So far, only the States of Maharashtra, Punjab and union territory of Chandigarh had filed compliance reports. The contempt petition against Rajasthan government has been posted separately on August 30.
Senior advocate Indira Jaising who appeared for Poonawala urged the bench to summon the Principal Secretary (Home) in Court as this was a brazen violation of Court’s orders. The bench assured her that it would first examine the steps taken by the state in this regard and then decide whether to summon the official. The bench asked the counsel appearing for Rajasthan government whether disciplinary action was initiated against the guilty police officials. To this, the counsel informed that action has been initiated by the State Government and sought permission of Court to place it on affidavit.
The apex court had in its judgment termed incidents of lynching as “horrendous acts of mobocracy” that cannot be allowed to overrun the law of the land. It issued a slew of guidelines to deal with lynching arising out of vigilantism to protect cows. The bench even asked the Centre to consider enacting a new law to sternly deal with such cases.