-The Indian Express The Rajasthan Protection from Lynching Bill, 2019 makes mob lynching a cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable offence punishable with life imprisonment and a fine up to Rs 5 lakh. Bhopal, Jaipur: On Monday, the Rajasthan Assembly passed a new law against mob lynching. Another Congress government, in Madhya Pradesh, recently introduced a Bill that seeks to curb cow vigilantism. The State Law Commission in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, meanwhile, has...

-The Hindu The national bar against hate crime has been lowered, but resolute corrective action is possible Once again, the first weeks of the Narendra Modi administration have been marked by hate crimes — two Muslim men beaten by mobs in Jharkhand and Mumbai, demanding they shout ‘Jai Shri Ram’, one so mercilessly that he died. Another man, a tribal, lynched in Tripura on suspicion of being a cattle thief. Most recently,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has initiated the process of installing an automated facial recognition system (AFRS) that will help identify persons by matching digital images, photos and video feeds with an existing database, in a move that raises concerns over privacy. According to the request for proposal (RFP) document seeking open bids for an AFRS solution, the benefits include a robust system for identifying...

-The Telegraph The figure does not include the three deaths that took place this year, including that of Tabrez Ansari, 24 Ranchi: Seventeen of the 44 people lynched in the country between May 2015 and December 2018 were killed in Jharkhand, according to data collated by an NGO. The figure puts Jharkhand at the top of the heap of states where lynch mobs have struck, the small eastern state accounting for around 40...

-Hindustan Times It is also important to remember that both these laws were the product of sustained, grassroots-level social movements. Consequently, perhaps the surest remedy against possible future dilution may lie not in judicial challenges (although that remains important), but in popular mobilisation. With the 2019 general election yielding a decisive mandate for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), attention will soon turn to the new government’s legislative agenda. As the government is...