Government Forms Expert Panel to Curb Lynching

• 24 Jul 2018

The Ministry of Home Affairs has set up a high powered committee to deliberate on all issues relating to mob lynching and to formulate appropriate measures to deal with such incidents.

• The committee will examine the issue of establishing mob lynching as a separate offence. It will also examine the legal framework under which this can be done.
• The four-member committee will be led by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba and will also include the secretaries of the Department of Justice, Department of Legal Affairs, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Legislative Department of Ministry of Law and Justice.
• The committee will submit its recommendations to the government within four weeks (i.e by the end of August or early September 2018).
• The recommendations of the panel will be examined by a Group of Ministers led by the Home Minister Rajnath Singh (Union ministers Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Thawar Chand Gehlot are believed to be the other members of this GoM) which will then submit its report to the Prime Minister.
• The formation of the committee comes in the wake of Supreme Court’s directions to the Union government to draft a special law against incidents of lynching.
• Supreme Court held Central and State governments accountable for mob violence and directed them to enact a special law establishing lynching by mobs as a separate offence with separate punishment. The court had called for preventive, remedial and punitive measures to deal with lynching and mob violence.

Read more on SC's guidelines...