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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Murderous mob -- 9 states, 27 killings, one year: And a pattern to the lynchings -Rashmi Rajput, Abhishek Saha, Sweety Kumari, Sreenivas Janyala, Johnson TA, Arun Janardhanan, Prashant Pandey, and Dipankar Ghose

Murderous mob -- 9 states, 27 killings, one year: And a pattern to the lynchings -Rashmi Rajput, Abhishek Saha, Sweety Kumari, Sreenivas Janyala, Johnson TA, Arun Janardhanan, Prashant Pandey, and Dipankar Ghose

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published Published on Jul 9, 2018   modified Modified on Jul 9, 2018
-The Indian Express

Murderous mob — 9 states: The Indian Express investigates the circumstances of each death related to child-lifting rumours to find a common plot: helpless police, migrant victims.

Bengaluru, Chennai, Dhule, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Raipur, Ranchi:
Being an outsider, moving after sunset, taking an unfamiliar road, stopping to ask for directions, even offering a chocolate to a child on the way.

This is what led to the killing of 27 people in 15 cases of lynchings by frenzied mobs blinded by viral rumours of child-kidnappers on the prowl across nine states — from Assam to Tamil Nadu — in the last one year.

While the sudden burst of murderous rage may be spontaneous, an investigation by The Indian Express of the circumstances around each incident reveals distinct patterns — the demographics of the mob, its nature of mobilisation, the profile of accused, the way rumours spread, the response of police and the legal process.

One key finding of the investigation is this: proximity or distance of police from the scene of the crime doesn’t make a difference. In the 27 killings, the nearest station was 2-20 km from the spot — on an average, within 10 km. Yet, police were unable to reach in time. In the handful of cases that they did, they were heavily outnumbered.

Clearly, the rumour and the mob moves faster than the police. And rumour wins over fact — always. No previous case of kidnapping was recorded — or even suspected — in any of these lynching spots in the three months leading up to the attacks.

Significantly, in all these cases, The Indian Express found, the victims were not known to the accused and were merely passing through.

The latest black spot in the spate of killings — the lynching of five in Maharashtra’s Dhule on July 1 — prompted the central government to write to WhatsApp, which responded that it has introduced a series of measures, including labels on forwarded messages.

“But in the end, it’s down to the local police. How effective is their local intelligence in alerting them about tensions on the ground or an impending attack, how quickly they respond, how prepared they are in terms of arms and the number of personnel, what is the impact of their awareness measures. All these count, and have counted in the number of possible lynchings that have been prevented across the country due to timely intervention but have gone unreported,” a senior government official told The Indian Express.

In some cases, however, none of this worked. In Jharkhand, the victims were dragged out of a police jeep. And in Tripura, they sought refuge inside a police camp, which was stormed.

Please click here to read more.

(Written by Rashmi Rajput in Dhule, Abhishek Saha in Guwahati, Sweety Kumari in Kolkata, Sreenivas Janyala in Hyderabad, Johnson TA in Bengaluru, Arun Janardhanan in Chennai, Prashant Pandey in Ranchi and Dipankar Ghose in Raipur)

The Indian Express, 7 July, 2018, https://indianexpress.com/article/india/murderous-mob-lynching-incidents-in-india-dhule-whatsapp-rumour-5247741/


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