View: Don't let murderers hide behind mobs
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs reviewing the three new criminal justice Bills, including the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) 2023, is reportedly going to recommend that the punishment for murder by mob lynching on the grounds of caste or community — proposed as not less than seven years in BNS — be dropped and brought on a par with punishment for murder. This is a welcome suggestion.
GoI should accept the panel's recommendation, make the requisite change in BNS and send out a clear signal that the Indian state will not tolerate hate crimes.
BNS, which will replace the colonial-era Indian Penal Code (IPC), proposes three options for punishing those in a lynch mob that has committed murder: seven years' prison, life imprisonment, or death. In doing so, GoI has chosen to replicate the provisions for murder and culpable homicide not amounting to murder for mob lynching.
While the punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder is five years, for mob lynching, the minimum is slightly higher. Given that hate forms the core of mob lynching cases and death for the targeted individuals the intent of the mob, there is no reason to put the option of a punishment intended for manslaughter (or homicide not amounting to murder) in the books.
While the sentence for mob lynching should be the same as that for homicide, it must continue to be recognised in the code as a separate class of crime as proposed in BNS.
With BNS, GoI has made it clear that it is serious about tackling mob lynching by recognising it as a separate class of crime. Now, it must demonstrate its lack of tolerance for this crime.
