Is It Justice?

September 2019, a black Sedan, with a presumption of road rage by the driver, reverses into the crowds on the street, injuring some, with no deaths reported. After this so-called fit of rage, he rushes away to not get caught. Usually, we would count this as a normal reaction by the criminal to run away from the scene of the crime.

The Times of India article covering this freak incident explains the scenario briefly(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/delhi-speeding-car-ploughs-through-crowd-injures-one-in-model-town/articleshow/70947682.cms).

The comment of a person on the article drew my attention, “The mob lynches mentality in India makes the culprit run away from the accident site. Probably the fear of lynching made the motorist speed away from the site.” This to me, seemed to be as a usual case of a hit and run, which is fueled by the element of road rage. It seemed normal(but not morally)  for the culprit to run away from the scene of the crime to avoid arrest. The current scenario of rise in mob lynching is adding a sense of rationality in the culprit’s decision to flee from the scene rather than it already being a normative reaction after a crime being committed. The idea that the culprit’s reaction to running away from the scene of the crime is being understood by many as a justifiable act, to not to avoid the law, but to avoid another set of law-breakers, i.e. the mob lynchers.

We can thus get a sense of victimization being felt for the culprit in many of these crimes. This is not to say or point out who is guilty or not; what we’re trying to say is that the accused, is being penalized and victimized from different sides of the belief system of our nation even before being pleading or being held guilty for his crime. It feels as if the Justice system has been told to take a vacation, and everyone has started taking matters in their own hands. The supposed encounter, possible killing, of the alleged rapists of the Hyderabad case by the local police force could serve as an example of this.

Researching into the history of mob violence in India, it was distressing to look into the incidents, with records of deaths being up to 106 people killed in lynching incidents since 2014. The Quint has a whole page by the name of “ Lynchistan”, looking into incidents, categorizing them into mob violence due to caste, religion, robbery, child-lifting, cow-slaughter. Almost all incidents allegedly with the thought of the mob taking matters into their own hands. It is not to mean that all the accused were innocent, some might actually be guilty of the crimes they are accused of.

Generally, victimization of offenders relates to the psychological victimization of the offender due to his past experiences which tend to imbalance his emotional and mental equity. In this case, the past of the offender has no relation to them taking part in acts of being a criminal, instead, there are in many cases, no evidence to prove them taking part in criminal activities, this reaction to the situation is of a criminal fleeing from a crime scene. This reaction is forced by the risk of instant justice by a mob.

The act of direct justice taking place leads to an interpretation of this as a case of lost faith in the official justice system of India with trials generally taking years. Hence the question, “Why are the laws of the land and the legal system lynched every time?”( https://www.newsclick.in/psychology-of-lynch-mob-india) There were always cases of hit and runs, however now, the fact, that people have started adding a justification clause to the “run” factor is baffling, but it sadly makes sense too. Simply put, the suspect in the hit and run scenario was scared of justice earlier too, hence the ‘run’, except this time his action is being justified by him being scared of the unlawful and harsh direct justice that could be meted by a mob.

Hence adding the justification clause for the accused. Thus we have to make the masses understand the importance of proper justice to take place in proper systematic order, so that these decisions are taken place efficiently, without the accused becoming a sort of a victim in the cases of India’s current justice preference by the public.

 I came upon a concept that is acknowledged by researchers studying victimology, a relation between the victims and offenders, calling it “the Victim-Offender Overlap”. This has been a very popular theory of victimology, making rational reasoning for delinquency, where it gives a psychological understanding and reasoning to the offenses partaken by offenders. Research on this overlap is done so to define and explain the ways in which victims and offenders influence and affect each other. Researchers have recognized three different types of individuals involved in crime( Mustaine & Tewksbury, 2000). Firstly who are exclusively victims. Then there are offenders, who are exclusively offenders. Lastly, there are victims who are also offenders, individuals who have a history of both victimization and offending, in which many times, the psychological impact of victimization is what has led the “victim-offenders” to take part in further offending. The third category is a justification for the reasons what led the offender, who initially at some point in time in his life was a victim, was mentally led to take part in offenses, being blamed as a psychological imbalance.

In the case of mob-lynchings, instead of victims becoming offenders, the offenders are becoming victims, thus “the path to justice” is even rockier than usual, due to this abnormality.

Mob-lynching is not just a safety concern for people falsely accused but also an nonjudicial element of society that needs to be taken care of. Proper steps to justice should be followed, and the idea of “taking the matter into your own hands” is something that should not be motivated as it can and will cause an imbalance in a democratic society like India’s. The judicial presumption of innocent until proven guilty is an important factor to remember. Even the black Sedan driver, about whom I talked initially, has to be assumed innocent and processed in the court, for his unquestionably wrong actions which would have led him to conviction and proper actions would have taken place against them. Sadly, the raised concern of mob-lynching presumably led people to believe that the person’s reaction of backing into the crowd and fleeing was justifiable for the person to avoid being lynched, hence in this case, the offender becoming the victim, AFTER committing the crime.

Reactions to mob-lynching have been diverse, with people in support and against. One important example that shows the diversity in people’s opinion in support and against mob-lynching is the “Hyderabad Case”, the rape and murder of veterinary doctor, Priyanka Reddy by 4 men that as many other cases had, shook the minds of many, including mine, after finding out the horrific details of the case. In reaction to this, Members of Parliaments had a very strong reaction against the four accused, with recommendations of Mob-lynching, and public executions which showed how emotionally the people were hurt about the case. While emotionally I wanted to agree with the MPs recommendations for instant justice, but I disagreed with it because of the unconstitutional conceptual basis of it. The MPs, as representatives of the constitution should have themselves believed in instead of pushing such ideas ahead, which would certainly be influential for some minds in the nation. A few days after these wild reactions to the case, I wasn’t shocked to hear that the accused had been killed. The police force of Hyderabad had taken the accused to the crime scene, to “re-enact” what happened. Apparently, the accused tried to fight back, or in another scenario, they tried to grab a gun from an officer, in reaction to which all 4 of them were shot dead. This, if and mostly untrue in my mind seems to push the thought of self-justice, ignoring the system of the judicial action to take down such criminals.

Mob-lynching has become an element of society, which might be taking place to carry justice, but justice in an unconstitutional way, because many times the ones killed are not yet convicted, and it doesn’t matter if they were formally judged in the court or not. I’m not trying to suggest that the accused of the Hyderabad case were not guilty of a very heinous crime, but it’s the sense of justice that was missing, and such episodes could be influencing enough to push people to take justice into their own hands. It won’t be long before an accused who is actually innocent would be wrongfully killed because of such a mindset, which the phase of mob-lynching is setting.