Mob Lynching in India: Legal Challenges and Policy Responses

Abstract:

Mob lynching has emerged as one of the gravest threats to the rule of law in contemporary India, manifesting as extra-judicial violence perpetrated by organised groups against individuals based on religion, caste, rumour, or perceived transgression of social norms. This paper examines the phenomenon of mob lynching in India through a tripartite lens encompassing its socio-political context, the existing legal architecture governing such violence, and the policy responses that have been proposed or adopted at the national and state levels. It analyses the constitutional guarantees under Articles 14, 21, and 22 of the Constitution of India, the applicability of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and the newly enacted Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, alongside the landmark judicial pronouncements of the Supreme Court of India — most notably in Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India (2018) — which issued binding preventive, remedial, and punitive directives to the executive. The paper critically evaluates why general criminal law has proved inadequate to address the specific evils of mob violence and assesses draft state legislation in Rajasthan and Manipur as well as the demand for a central anti-lynching statute. It concludes with concrete legislative and policy recommendations to dismantle the culture of impunity that currently surrounds vigilante mob violence in India.

Keywords: Mob Lynching, Vigilante Violence, Hate Crime, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Tehseen Poonawalla, Anti-Lynching Legislation, Communal Violence, Rule of Law

1. Introduction

On 28 September 2015, Mohammad Akhlaq was dragged from his home in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, and beaten to death by a mob on the suspicion that his family had stored and consumed beef. The incident sent shockwaves through the nation and brought into sharp relief a pattern of organised mob violence that had been simmering beneath the surface of Indian public life. Since then, dozens of similar incidents — involving alleged cattle smugglers, child-lifting rumours spread through social media, inter-faith couples, and individuals accused of blasphemy — have resulted in deaths, grievous injuries, and the systematic terrorisation of minority communities across the country.

Mob lynching, in its contemporary Indian avatar, is best understood as extra-judicial collective violence in which a group of persons, often motivated by religious, casteist, or communal animus, takes the law into its own hands to punish an individual for a real or perceived wrong. It is distinguishable from spontaneous crowd violence by the element of premeditation, social coordination — frequently facilitated by encrypted messaging platforms — and the near-total absence of accountability for perpetrators. Its victims are overwhelmingly drawn from religious minorities, Dalits, Adivasis, and other marginalised communities.

The Indian legal system, inherited from the colonial era and subsequently expanded through constitutional guarantees and social legislation, was not designed with the express phenomenon of mob lynching in mind. General provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, concerning murder, grievous hurt, unlawful assembly, and rioting have been the primary instruments of prosecution; yet conviction rates remain abysmally low, police response is frequently delayed or complicit, and the social narratives that legitimise vigilante violence continue to be reproduced with impunity. This paper argues that the absence of a specific anti-lynching statute, combined with structural failures in criminal justice administration, has created a de facto environment of impunity that must be dismantled through concerted legislative, judicial, and administrative action.

The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 outlines the socio-political context and the empirical scale of the problem. Section 3 maps the existing legal framework — constitutional, statutory, and judge-made — applicable to mob lynching. Section 4 analyses the judicial response, with particular attention to the Supreme Court's landmark directions in Tehseen S. Poonawalla. Section 5 evaluates the adequacy of existing law and examines proposed legislative responses. Section 6 surveys state-level initiatives. Section 7 offers comparative perspectives from international human rights law. Section 8 presents the paper's conclusions and recommendations.

2. Background: Socio-Political Context and the Scale of the Problem

2.1 Historical Roots of Vigilante Violence

Collective violence in the name of protecting community honour, religious sentiment, or social order has deep historical roots in the Indian subcontinent. Caste panchayats have historically inflicted death penalties on inter-caste couples; colonial records document crowd violence against individuals accused of crimes against the community. However, the contemporary phenomenon of mob lynching that has dominated Indian public discourse since 2015 possesses distinctive features that mark it out as qualitatively different from prior forms of collective violence.

First, the role of social media — particularly WhatsApp — in catalysing and coordinating mob violence is unprecedented. Fabricated videos, doctored images, and inflammatory messages spread within hours, converting rumour into lethal conviction. Second, the incidents exhibit a troubling pattern of intersection with majoritarian political discourse, lending perpetrators a sense of ideological legitimacy that renders prosecution politically sensitive. Third, unlike earlier forms of communal rioting, contemporary lynching frequently targets lone individuals rather than communities, making it even more resistant to standard riot-control and investigation protocols.

2.2 Empirical Data

According to data compiled by the India Spend Hate Crime Tracker and the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), at least 280 incidents of cow-related mob violence were recorded between 2010 and 2018, of which nearly 97% occurred after May 2014. A comprehensive 2019 study by Reuters found that India witnessed at least 100 mob lynching deaths between 2015 and 2019. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) does not maintain a separate category for mob lynching, which itself reflects the extent to which the criminal justice system has failed to recognise the specific phenomenon.

Incidents have been recorded across states including Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Karnataka, and Assam, pointing to a pan-India dimension. The triggers have included alleged cow slaughter and beef possession, accusations of child-lifting (amplified through viral WhatsApp videos), suspicion of theft, alleged sacrilege, and inter-faith relationships. Muslims and Dalits constitute the largest categories of victims, though Adivasis, members of the Nomadic Tribes, and persons with mental illness have also been targeted.

3. Existing Legal Framework

3.1 Constitutional Guarantees

The Constitution of India provides the foundational normative framework within which mob lynching must be assessed. Article 14 guarantees equality before law and equal protection of laws, embodying the principle that no individual may be subjected to arbitrary punishment outside a court of law. Article 21, the most expansive of the fundamental rights, guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law — a guarantee interpreted by the Supreme Court to include the right to life with dignity, the right to be free from torture, and the right to be protected from arbitrary killing by state and non-state actors alike.

In the context of mob lynching, the state's obligation under Article 21 is not merely negative (to refrain from taking life) but also positive: it is obligated to take reasonable measures to protect the lives and bodily integrity of citizens from private mob violence. This positive obligation, grounded in the doctrine of constitutional tort and affirmed in a line of judgments from Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa (1993) through to Tehseen S. Poonawalla (2018), provides the constitutional basis for the Supreme Court's direction to the central and state governments to take proactive preventive action.

Article 22 guarantees rights against arbitrary arrest and detention, including the right to be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours. While primarily directed at state action, the spirit of Article 22 underscores that punishment in India is a function exclusively of the judiciary; no private entity — however large the mob — may arrogate to itself the power to punish, condemn, or execute. Articles 15(1) and (2) additionally prohibit discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, or place of birth, and are relevant where mob violence is demonstrably motivated by communal or caste-based animus.

3.2 Indian Penal Code, 1860 / Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023

The primary statutory instruments available to prosecute perpetrators of mob lynching are the provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC), as replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) with effect from 1 July 2024. The following provisions are of principal relevance.

Section 302 IPC (Section 101 BNS) — Murder: Where the victim dies, the primary charge available against individual perpetrators who caused the fatal blow is murder, punishable with death or life imprisonment. However, proving individual causation in a mob scenario is notoriously difficult; witnesses are frequently intimidated, and forensic evidence is often contaminated or absent.

Section 34 IPC (Section 3(5) BNS) — Common Intention: Section 34 provides that where a criminal act is done by several persons in furtherance of the common intention of all, each of such persons is liable for that act as if it were done by him alone. This is the single most important prosecutorial tool in mob violence cases, as it permits the conviction of all members of the mob who shared common intention, regardless of which individual delivered the fatal blow. The courts have held that common intention may be formed spontaneously and does not require pre-planning.

Sections 141-149 IPC (Sections 189-190 BNS) — Unlawful Assembly and Rioting: An assembly of five or more persons is designated an unlawful assembly where they share a common object within the meaning of Section 141 IPC (Section 189 BNS). Section 146 IPC makes rioting (where an unlawful assembly uses force or violence) punishable with up to two years' imprisonment. Crucially, Section 149 IPC (Section 190(2) BNS) imposes vicarious liability on every member of an unlawful assembly for any offence committed by any member in prosecution of the common object, or where such commission was known to be likely. This provision, read with Section 302, is the most effective tool for prosecuting mob violence resulting in death.

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 has introduced a specific provision — Section 103(2) — which explicitly addresses murder committed by a mob. It provides that where five or more persons jointly commit murder on the ground of race, caste, community, sex, place of birth, language, or personal belief, each such person shall be punished with death or life imprisonment and a fine. This is the first time mob lynching has received explicit statutory recognition in Indian criminal law, and it marks a significant legislative step forward, though critical observers have noted that it does not address prevention, compensation, or rehabilitation of victims, and does not impose any duties on investigating officers.

3.3 Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989

Where the victim belongs to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe and the offence is motivated by caste identity, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (as amended in 2015) provides a specialised legal framework. The Act creates specific offences — including causing hurt or grievous hurt on the ground of caste identity — and mandates the establishment of special courts and special public prosecutors. It also creates a presumption of guilt in certain circumstances and imposes specific duties on investigating officers and the state government. The Act has been invoked in cases of lynching of Dalit individuals, though its application has been inconsistent.

3.4 Information Technology Act, 2000 / Telecommunications Act, 2023

The role of social media in inciting mob violence has prompted recourse to the Information Technology Act, 2000, particularly Sections 66A (struck down in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015)) and 67 (obscene content), as well as to Section 153A IPC (Section 196 BNS) which penalises acts promoting enmity between religious groups. The Supreme Court in Tehseen S. Poonawalla directed the central government to issue guidelines to social media intermediaries requiring them to take down lynching-incitement content within a defined time frame. The subsequent amendment of the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules in 2021 and 2023 has strengthened the regulatory framework for content moderation.

4. Judicial Response

4.1 Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India (2018)

The most significant judicial intervention on mob lynching in India is the Supreme Court's judgment in Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India, (2018) 9 SCC 501, delivered by a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. The case arose from a public interest litigation filed by social activist Tehseen Poonawalla seeking directions to prevent cow vigilantism and mob lynching. The Court framed the issue as one going to the heart of the rule of law and constitutional morality, stating that the 'horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be permitted to inundate the law of the land'.

The Court issued exhaustive directions under three heads:

Preventive Measures: Each state was directed to designate a senior police officer (not below the rank of Superintendent of Police) as a Nodal Officer in each district to take measures to prevent incidents of mob violence and lynching. State governments were directed to identify districts, sub-divisions, and villages where instances of lynching and mob violence had occurred and ensure that the Nodal Officers in such areas are extra-cautious. The Court further directed that if it comes to the knowledge of the Nodal Officer that any hate speech or provocative statements are being made by persons, they shall ensure that FIRs are registered under appropriate provisions of law.

Remedial Measures: The Court directed the station house officers (SHOs) to cause an FIR to be lodged under appropriate provisions and to inform the Nodal Officer when a mob lynching incident occurs. The trial of cases must be conducted on a day-to-day basis, and fast-track courts must be designated for mob lynching trials. The Court further directed that compensation to victims must be paid by the state governments under the scheme framed under Section 357A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

Punitive Measures: The Court directed that disciplinary action shall be taken against erring police and district administration officials who do not comply with the directives or are found to have facilitated or connived at the commission of mob violence. The Court also observed that the Parliament may consider enacting a specific law to address mob lynching.

Importantly, the Court invoked the state's positive obligation under Article 21 to protect the life of every individual and located mob lynching within the constitutional law of extra-judicial killing, holding that it amounted to a grave violation of fundamental rights that the state is duty-bound to prevent and remedy.

4.2 Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018) and Other Decisions

In Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, (2018) 7 SCC 192, the Supreme Court issued preventive directions specifically in the context of honour killings by khap panchayats, many of the principles articulated therein — including the positive duty of the state, the need for fast-tracking of trials, and the mandatory payment of victim compensation — apply with equal force to mob lynching cases. The Court in Shakti Vahini emphasised that the constitutional scheme does not permit any private body to adjudicate and punish, and that the rule of law brooks no exception.

In Re: Prajwala Letter Case, (2017), the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of the circulation of child sexual abuse material on WhatsApp, and the resultant order requiring messaging platforms to take down violent and illegal content has been extended by analogy to lynching-incitement material. Several High Courts — including the Jharkhand High Court in Sunil Murmu v. State of Jharkhand and the Rajasthan High Court in various bail matters — have specifically addressed lynching cases and imposed enhanced scrutiny on bail applications filed by perpetrators.

5. Adequacy of Existing Law and the Case for Specific Legislation

5.1 Structural Inadequacies

Despite the availability of the above legal instruments, the conviction rate in mob lynching cases in India remains extremely low. Several structural factors account for this deficit. First, the IPC's provisions on murder, unlawful assembly, and rioting were not designed with the specific evils of organised communal mob violence in mind. Proving 'common intention' under Section 34 or 'common object' under Section 149 requires evidence of shared purpose among mob members, which is difficult to establish in the face of mass witness intimidation and inadequate video surveillance in rural areas.

Second, the police — frequently belonging to the same dominant community as the perpetrators — are often slow to register FIRs, dilute charges (registering grievous hurt instead of attempted murder, or culpable homicide instead of murder), and fail to pursue adequate investigation. The Supreme Court noted in Tehseen Poonawalla that the attitude of law enforcement personnel in several states had been 'callous and indifferent' to mob violence. Third, witness protection mechanisms in India remain woefully inadequate; witnesses in lynching cases regularly turn hostile under community pressure. Fourth, the absence of a specific hate crime categorisation in Indian law means that the communal or casteist motivation of perpetrators is not adequately reflected in charges or sentencing.

5.2 The BNS Section 103(2): An Assessment

The introduction of Section 103(2) BNS has been welcomed as a statutory acknowledgement of the problem of mob lynching. However, it suffers from several limitations. It is confined to mob murder and does not address mob violence falling short of murder, such as grievous hurt, sexual assault by mobs, or destruction of property. It does not create any obligations on the state with respect to investigation, prosecution, or victim compensation, leaving the systemic failures identified in Tehseen Poonawalla unaddressed at the legislative level. It does not prescribe a special investigative procedure, and no special courts are mandated for its trials. Critics have also pointed out that the definition of 'mob' (five or more persons) is identical to that of an unlawful assembly under Section 189, making the specific provision's added value in procedural terms unclear.

5.3 The Case for a Dedicated Central Anti-Lynching Law

A dedicated central law on mob lynching — analogous to the Prevention of Torture Bill (2010) or the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control, and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill (2005, 2011) — would serve several functions that the existing legal framework cannot. First, it would explicitly define mob lynching as a distinct offence, differentiated from ordinary murder and rioting by the twin elements of collective action and targeted animus. Second, it could codify the preventive, remedial, and punitive obligations articulated in Tehseen Poonawalla, thereby giving them statutory force and making non-compliance by state officers a criminal rather than a merely administrative matter. Third, it could establish a mandatory victim compensation scheme with defined timelines and amounts. Fourth, it could create dedicated fast-track courts with exclusive jurisdiction, mandatory time-bound trial processes, and enhanced witness protection mechanisms. Fifth, it could impose specific duties on social media intermediaries to take down lynching-incitement content, with penal consequences for non-compliance.

6. State-Level Legislative Initiatives

6.1 Rajasthan Protection from Lynching Bill, 2019

The most comprehensive state-level legislative initiative in India is the Rajasthan Protection from Lynching Bill, 2019, passed by the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly during the tenure of the Congress government led by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. The Bill defined lynching as any act or series of acts of violence or aiding, abetting, or attempting violence, whether spontaneous or planned, by a mob on the grounds of religion, race, caste or community, sex, place of birth, language, dietary practice, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or ethnicity. It provided for punishment ranging from three years to life imprisonment and a fine between Rs. 1 lakh and Rs. 5 lakh for various categories of offences, including for state officials who neglect their duties.

The Bill also established a special relief fund for victims and entitled victims or their dependents to compensation. It mandated the appointment of a coordinator in each district to oversee implementation and created a state-level monitoring authority. However, the Bill was referred to the Governor for assent and remained pending; it lapsed following the change of government after the 2023 elections. The fate of the Rajasthan Bill illustrates the political vulnerability of anti-lynching legislation in India: its passage and subsequent stalling were directly linked to changes in the political executive rather than any substantive legal objection.

6.2 Manipur Protection from Mob Violence Act, 2018

Manipur was the first state in India to enact a law specifically addressing mob violence. The Manipur Protection from Mob Violence Act, 2018, defines mob violence and establishes offences and penalties therefor. The Act provides for the payment of compensation to victims and creates a committee to monitor and control incidents of mob violence. While limited in scope compared to the Rajasthan Bill, the Manipur Act represents an important precedent demonstrating that state-level anti-lynching legislation is constitutionally permissible and practically feasible.

6.3 West Bengal and Other States

The West Bengal government introduced the West Bengal (Prevention of Mob Violence) Bill, 2019, in the state assembly. Several other states, including Jharkhand, have seen demands from civil society organisations for specific legislation, particularly in the wake of high-profile lynching deaths — including that of Alimuddin Ansari in 2017 — within their territory. No other state has yet enacted a comprehensive anti-lynching law.

7. International Human Rights Law Perspectives

India's obligations under international human rights law provide an important normative backdrop to the domestic legal analysis. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by India in 1979, requires state parties to protect the right to life from violations by private actors, thereby imposing a positive duty to prevent mob killings. The UN Human Rights Committee's General Comment No. 36 (2018) on Article 6 explicitly addresses the state's duty to exercise due diligence to protect the right to life from private violence, including by criminalising incitement to violence.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), ratified by India in 1968, requires states to take effective measures to combat incitement to racial or ethnic violence and to ensure that public authorities and institutions do not practice racial discrimination. Where mob lynching is motivated by communal or ethnic animus — as is overwhelmingly the case in India — the state's failure to prosecute perpetrators effectively may constitute a violation of ICERD obligations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism has specifically addressed mob lynching in India in communications to the Indian government.

The UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials further reinforce the duty of the state to intervene promptly to prevent mob violence and to investigate and prosecute perpetrators regardless of their numbers. The concept of 'due diligence' — requiring the state to take reasonable steps to prevent, investigate, prosecute, and remedy private violence — is now firmly embedded in international human rights jurisprudence and has been cited by the Supreme Court of India in Tehseen Poonawalla as reinforcing the constitutional positive obligation under Article 21.

8. Discussion and Analysis

The foregoing analysis reveals a paradox at the heart of the Indian state's response to mob lynching: the constitutional framework and judicial pronouncements provide a robust normative foundation for comprehensive action, yet implementation remains systemically weak. This paradox can be explained by the intersection of three interlocking factors.

The first is political economy: where perpetrators of mob violence enjoy political support or ideological alignment with those in power, the incentive structure facing police, prosecutors, and lower judiciary militates against vigorous enforcement. The criminalisation of mob violence is, in this sense, inseparable from the broader question of political will to confront majoritarian vigilantism.

The second is institutional design: the Indian criminal justice system was not designed for mass prosecutions arising from a single incident involving scores of perpetrators acting in coordinated fashion over a short period of time. Existing investigation and trial procedures — built around individual accused persons and linear chains of evidence — are ill-suited to the evidentiary and logistical demands of mob violence prosecutions. The absence of specialised investigation units, dedicated fast-track courts, and robust witness protection mechanisms translates even politically uncontested cases into prosecutorial failures.

The third is the absence of a comprehensive data and accountability architecture. The NCRB's failure to maintain a separate lynching category means that the state cannot even accurately measure the problem it is trying to solve. Without reliable data disaggregated by religion, caste, geography, and motive, it is impossible to design targeted preventive interventions or to hold state officials accountable for their performance in reducing lynching incidents.

Section 103(2) BNS, while symbolically significant, does not address any of these three factors. It neither aligns the political incentive structure, nor redesigns investigative and prosecutorial procedures, nor creates a data and accountability architecture. A comprehensive central anti-lynching statute that addresses all three dimensions is therefore necessary.

9. Conclusion and Recommendations

Mob lynching represents a fundamental assault on the rule of law, constitutional morality, and the dignity of the human person. The Indian legal framework — constitutional, statutory, and judge-made — provides significant resources for addressing this assault, yet implementation failures, structural inadequacies, and the absence of political will have combined to produce a de facto culture of impunity. The introduction of Section 103(2) BNS marks legislative progress but falls short of the comprehensive statutory response that the scale and gravity of the problem demands.

This paper makes the following recommendations:

First, the Parliament of India should enact a dedicated Prevention of Mob Lynching Act that defines mob lynching as a specific, aggravated offence; imposes statutory duties on police, administration, and social media intermediaries; establishes designated fast-track courts; creates a mandatory victim compensation fund; provides for mandatory registration and transparent tracking of all lynching incidents; and criminalises the failure of public officials to discharge their preventive and investigative duties.

Second, the NCRB should immediately create a separate category for mob lynching in its annual Crime in India report, with sub-categorisation by religion, caste, motive, and outcome. Accurate data collection is the foundation of any evidence-based policy response.

Third, all state governments should fully implement the directions issued by the Supreme Court in Tehseen S. Poonawalla, including the appointment of Nodal Officers, the establishment of fast-track courts, and the operationalisation of victim compensation schemes under Section 357A CrPC (now Section 396 BNSS).

Fourth, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology should issue binding guidelines to social media intermediaries establishing mandatory response times (not exceeding 24 hours) for the removal of lynching-incitement content, with penal consequences for non-compliance.

Fifth, a national Witness Protection Programme — which currently exists only in embryonic form through the Supreme Court's directions in Mahender Chawla v. Union of India (2019) — must be given statutory force and adequately funded to ensure that witnesses in lynching cases are protected from intimidation.

The corrosive effects of mob lynching on the social fabric, the rule of law, and the constitutional guarantee of equality and dignity cannot be overstated. At stake is not merely the life of the individual victim, but the foundational commitment of the Indian Republic to a pluralist, rights-respecting democracy governed by law rather than by the mob. The time for half-measures has long passed.

References / Bibliography

Cases

1. Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India, (2018) 9 SCC 501 (Supreme Court of India).

2. Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, (2018) 7 SCC 192 (Supreme Court of India).

3. Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1 (Supreme Court of India).

4. Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa, (1993) 2 SCC 746 (Supreme Court of India).

5. Mahender Chawla v. Union of India, (2019) 14 SCC 615 (Supreme Court of India).

6. In Re: Prajwala Letter Case, (2017) Suo Motu Writ Petition (Crl.) No. 3 of 2015 (Supreme Court of India).

Statutes and Legislation

7. Constitution of India, 1950, Articles 14, 15, 21, 22.

8. Indian Penal Code, 1860, Sections 34, 141-149, 153A, 302, 307.

9. Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, Sections 101, 103(2), 189, 190, 196.

10. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (as amended 2015).

11. Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, Section 357A; Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, Section 396.

12. Information Technology Act, 2000, and Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (amended 2023).

13. Manipur Protection from Mob Violence Act, 2018.

14. Rajasthan Protection from Lynching Bill, 2019 (lapsed).

Books and Articles

15. Apoorvanand, 'Understanding Lynching in Contemporary India' in Harsh Mander (ed), Indifference, Impunity and the State: Perspectives on Human Rights (Orient BlackSwan, 2019).

16. Aakar Patel, Price of the Modi Years (Westland Books, 2021) ch 7.

17. Salil Tripathi, The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and Its Unquiet Legacy (Yale University Press, 2014) (comparative perspectives).

18. Vrinda Grover, 'Mob Lynching and the Law: An Analysis of Legal Frameworks' (2019) 54(32) Economic and Political Weekly 20.

19. Faizan Mustafa and Ayesha Solanki, 'Mob Lynching: An Affront to Constitutional Morality' (2018) 53(38) Economic and Political Weekly 12.

20. Siddharth Narrain, 'Lynching, Impunity and the Limits of Criminal Law' (2019) 5(1) Indian Law Review 1.

21. People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), 'Hate and Hysteria: Report on Mob Lynching in India 2017-2019' (PUCL, 2019).

22. India Spend Hate Crime Tracker, 'Cow-Related Violence in India: A Data-Driven Analysis 2010-2018' <www.indiaspend.com> accessed June 2026.

International Instruments

23. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, 999 UNTS 171 (entered into force 23 March 1976), Article 6.

24. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, opened for signature 21 December 1965, 660 UNTS 195 (entered into force 4 January 1969).

25. UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 36: Article 6 (Right to Life), CCPR/C/GC/36 (3 September 2019).

26. UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, 'Report on Racial and Ethnic Discrimination and Xenophobia in India' (2020) UN Doc A/HRC/44/57.