The vile mob justice


A sickening trend these days, particularly on slower news days, are 'breaking' news alerts on TV about random incidents of mob justices being carried out in streets, mostly for petty crimes. The perpetrators are mostly common thieves, or robbers in some cases, being caught up by neighbours, derogated or beaten up badly in public and then handed over to police. Not only these mob justice footages are graphic at times, and in bad taste, police usually has an inert role to play in these cases, while people conveniently take law in their hands.


The sickest element of such incidents is the fact that everyone on the spot seems so aversive about the whole event, some even don’t bother to hide their amusement in front of the cameras. The juicy headlines on such news stories clearly tell you that even the reporters, cameramen and the editorial team found the incidents quite amusing.

No matter how justified you think the beatings and derogation is, what kind of mind can take delight in watching such things and then broadcasting that?

Some people try to justify such instances with the increase in street crimes and the ineffectiveness (in fact the counter role) of police and justice system in curbing these crimes. It’s a fact that no matter how many times a common robbery is reported, hardly anything is ever done about it. In such cases, frustration is bound to rise. Armed robbers, gangsters and pick-pockets - any one can easily get away with such crimes as long as they can afford a bribe. For the criminals to be given their due punishment, the authorities have to arrest them first and then they have to be proven guilty in court. Both unfortunately are highly unlikely. With the 'efficiencient' approach our police has, it is a task in itself just to get them to listen to the victim reporting the crime, let alone have an FIR registered.

I recognise these challenges with our justice system, but the question is, is this the right way to deal with these criminals? Our law enforcement agencies have clearly failed us but have we lost all our good sense as well?

If you distrust the justice system as much as you don’t want to leave justice in their hands, why do these mob executions have to be so utterly distasteful and public? There are hundreds of other ways – drawing media attention through protests is one, to begin with. What about the likelihood of innocent people being caught up for being at the wrong place at a wrong time?

Incidents like these do not only show the collapse of our justice, law and order system, to me it is more of an evidence of the absolutely deteriorating morality of our society. Apart from representing the sickness of our minds, it follows the rule of ‘survival of the fittest’!

This should not be encouraged, in all circumstances!

Bushra
2035 hours
Saturday 29 August 2015

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