Modi 3.0 and the Escalating Crisis of Mob Lynching Against Muslims in India

In the recent past, The India has seen the unprecedented rise in the mob lynching of Muslims which form a minority in the country that is under the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who began his third term in the office recently. Instead of reducing, cases of brutal lynching are increasing leading to the emergence of a different form of fear and insecurity among the minority groups in India. Mob lynching has become a social problem of the Indian state where it is witnessed that specific community is killed by the rowdy mobs. This article establishes that mob-lynching is not a simple concept but results from factors that have contributed to the social decay of the society and creation of an alarming environment of hatred.

Statistics reveal a grim narrative: since the reign of Modi in 2024, cases of mob violence have become more frequent and severe. A report on this revealed that 97% of all incidences of cow violence in India have taken place after Modi’s first rise to power. This unpleasant outlook has been sequential, and it does not seem to have an indication of halting.

This factor is considered to be one of the main causes because tensions based on communal affiliations have been brewing in India for a long time. Such differences which may be in terms of religion or caste are some of the hardest to deal with, as those are the basis of some tensions that some people with bad intentions use for the sake of creating havoc in the society.

In addition, biases that are almost genetically coded within society, including religious, caste, class, or ethnic ones, create the necessary conditions for mob lynching. Such prejudices inherited throughout the years have made discrimination and exclusion significant aspects of people’s lives, thereby making some people groups more vulnerable to attacks. The mob lynching criminals take advantage of such prejudices and use them to create negative positions of victims.

Some of the cases of attempts of mob lynching may be reported under section 103 (2)/62 BNS of Indian Penal Code. The punishment may be imprisonment; provided for that offence or with such fine as may be prescribed for the offence or with both. Realizing the fact that religion is major factor that fuels mob lynching, some of the Indian states have enacted or attempted to enact the anti-mob lynching laws which directly includes religion as one of the causes. These are; Manipur Protection from Mob Violence Ordinance, 2018, The West Bengal (Prevention of Lynching) Bill, 2019, Jharkhand (Mob Violence and Mob Lynching Prevention) Bill, 2021 and Rajasthan Protection from Lynching Bill, 2019.

Evocations of the recent circumstances in India revealed the drastic increase in the acts of mob criminality, particularly against individuals of the minority population suspected of committing various offences. A tragic sequence of events suggests that people such as Saddam Qureshi, Guddu Khan, Miya Khan, Farid, Salman, Irshad Alam, Maulana Shahab Uddin, and Firoz Qureshi were terminated in horrible killings thought to have been provoked for offenses as insignificant as cows’ transportation, theft, and even slight car accidents. These incidents depict a socially ingrained problem which seemed to worsen during Narendra Modi’s presidency seeing that there is an increased number of mob violence than ever before.

However, continuing doubts over the objectivity of the police force can’t be dispelled. Some people have reported that there exists pressures on the police to protect the accused and there is a video that came up showing policemen threatening occupants of a house in which Zakia Jafri, the wife of the slain Mr. Jafri, was attacked in 2002 in Gujarat which is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s native state. The rise of such occurrences emphasizes the importance of proper strategies to prevent lynching and uphold the equal rights for people.

It is claimed that integrity of investigations into mob lynching is compromised by various influence seeking strategies of investigating officers, leaders of the area, surgeons who conduct the autopsy, public prosecutors and police. Such tactics are deceptive and unfair to the victims and to the families of deceased persons killed by the police. The manipulation distorts the nature of the crime at the time of reporting, dilutes the strength of the evidence against the offenders.

More manipulation is done during the investigation process. Hearsays reported by Investigating Officers can also be manipulated by the latter by either omitting other supporting evidence like the injury marks on the body of the victim or even provide distorted inquest reports. Even though concrete fake post-mortem reports and tendering evidence selectively might have been made by the autopsy surgeon and the police in complicity, the record that is created is not the actual record of the event.

It is noted that all aspects, ranging from witness handling, are subject to manipulation as well. Targets of the abuse are locked in and can be forced to admit to things which they did not do, whereas offenders go free, witnesses can be threatened or forged into pinning the blame on the real victims, and accused people can be arrested late or not at all. Such systematic influencing guarantees that the right individuals do not get to court.

Last but not the least, the intention of mob lynching is most often either hidden or well-concealed while on the other hand fabricated cases can easily be filed against those who raise their voice against such inhuman acts or try to bring justice to the innocent victims of such heinous crimes. The whole process could be influenced by bias and prejudice as well as no genuine desire to find the truth in a given case. The above strategies are not only anti-justice but also build a culture of recklessness and absolution for the perpetrators while denying justice to the victims and society.

However, the open call for mob lynching of Muslims in India during Modi 3.0 has become one of the significant human rights violations that need intervention and reform. To tackle this crisis, legal changes, public awareness, and political will meaningful in the fight for justice are key to tackling this issue. The consequence of inaction would only make the situation worse in terms of political polarization which would further deteriorate the social structure and airs of the Indian democracy. The world now turns to India to rise to this occasion and remind the world of India’s unalienable principles of pluralism tolerance, and the rule of law.