It’s the job of the judiciary system to decide the punishment of any criminal offense, but what happened in Nagaland yesterday showed a completely different picture of our system.
A huge mob stormed into the Dimapur Central Jail and dragged out Syed Farid Khan, only to lynch him later on. The 35 year old victim was held in custody on the charges of raping a 20 year old woman repeatedly on February 23 and was also accused of being a Bangladeshi infiltrator.
On Thursday afternoon, the angry mob dragged him for almost 7 km, beating him brutally all the way long. People planned of hanging him near the Clock Tower, but Khan couldn’t take it and died on the way itself.
The district police chief, Meren Jamir, said to IANS, “A mob of around 4,000 people stormed the central jail after breaking the two gates and took the accused out of jail and paraded him naked to the city tower in the heart of Dimapur town, before we could rescue him from the mob.”
This outburst by the people clearly shows their lack of faith in the judiciary system. Taking such a radical step in spite of the condition being so volatile in the state, gives a clear indication that something is seriously going wrong. By volatile conditions what I meant was, Section 144 was already imposed in Dimapur district because of the huge issue related to illegal immigrants settling in the state. The Naga Students Federation were not at all affected this law, as they called a rally protesting against the rape and broke into the high security jail, leaving the officials stunned.
The mob burned almost 10 vehicles, including a huge bus when the police opened fire and started lathi charge in order to get the possession of the victim.
The situation got so much out of hand, that curfew had to be imposed in the whole city to bring Dimapur back to normalcy.
The District Magistrate of the city was quoted by IANS saying, “We have clamped curfew in Dimapur district to contain the law and order situation following the unfortunate incident.”
People in the city are still in shock and fear, specially the traders as the mob has demanded to cancel the licences of all non native citizens of the state. The shopkeepers also came in the line of fire as they were forced to close their shops and run away in order to avoid the lashing of the mob.
Few arrests have been made till now and the cabinet is also deciding to put a high level committee in place to inquire the whole case.
If someone has committed a crime as serious as rape, then he definitely deserves a punishment of great magnitude but this is certainly not the way to go about it. It is difficult to say that it is completely the fault of the mob in what happened yesterday, somewhere down the line the government has also failed in restoring the faith of the people in the system. If this is going to be the case from now onwards, then it won’t take time before the whole meaning of the term ‘law making bodies’ changes.
Image Credits: Zee News
