Baying for blood on Bihar streets

A new tide of barbarism is sweeping India, with armed mobs resorting to violence on a scale that has sent sociologists and human rights campaigners into a huddle to find a solution. 'Forced to solve his own problems, an average Indian no longer wears a benign expression and waits patiently for justice to take its course,' says social commentator Cooshalle Samuel. 'Today he has a rather cynical attitude and wears his anger on his sleeve. Tolerance levels are plunging. And an increasing number of ordinary people have no qualms about becoming the judge, jury and executioner rolled in one.' Last week, television channels showed 10 bodies strewn on the ground even as hordes of locals were pushed back by scores of policemen in Vaishali district of the lawless eastern state of Bihar. The men battered to death with iron rods and sticks were suspected to be robbers. Apparently, they had struck Dhelpurwa village a few times in quick succession, but the police allegedly failed to nab a single criminal or recover stolen articles. Villagers claimed that they started patrolling the area at night in desperation. 'When we finally caught them [the alleged bandits], we did justice then and there,' one of the perpetrators told journalists without a trace of remorse after the carnage, whose tremors were felt across India. To make matters worse, the authorities callously threw the 10 bodies into the Ganges River instead of cremating them, allegedly to pocket the cash. But the corpses were washed ashore, where dogs and vultures were photographed feeding on them, forcing the administration to transfer senior officials over the disposal of bodies. Not a single villager has been arrested or charged with the 10 deaths, although an official investigation has revealed that the victims were members of an impoverished nomadic tribe called Nat who were mistaken for criminals and lynched in a state which has become a byword for lawlessness. Amid a national uproar, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced: 'We are investigating whether it is an isolated incident or a trend. And if it is a trend, what is driving it?' A shaken Mr Kumar was alluding to a spurt in mob action in recent weeks which has caused unprecedented outrage and sparked demands for his resignation. This month alone, there have been three other chilling cases of vigilante 'justice' in Bihar. In Nawadah district, an enraged mob gouged out the eyes of three alleged motorcycle thieves. In Begusarai, two men caught stealing inside a power station were thrashed mercilessly before being gunned down. Even children are not spared: locals in Nawadah paraded two children, aged 12 and 13, with their heads shaved for reportedly stealing salt from a grocery store where they worked for a pittance. The horrific accounts of screaming victims being pinned down and their eyes gouged out in Nawadah suddenly rekindled memories of the rogue police practice of blinding criminals in 1980. A national scandal ensued after the now-defunct Sunday magazine exposed policemen in Bihar's Bhagalpur town who systematically rounded up robbers and rapists and blinded them by pouring acid into their eyes. The expose moved then prime minister Indira Gandhi to tears in parliament. More than a dozen men in uniform were arrested and prosecuted. Just before the Vaishali bloodbath, a man named Mohammad Aurangzeb was filmed being thrashed by a mob after he allegedly tried to snatch a gold chain from the neck of a woman in Bhagalpur. The dramatic footage showed Aurangzeb's hands being tied behind his back before he was kicked, punched and pulled by the hair as he writhed on the ground, soaked in sweat and mud, begging for mercy, his trousers unbuttoned. Significantly, two policemen were also captured on television camera assaulting the victim instead of rescuing him. And in what one analyst described as a Rodney King-style operation, the policemen tied Aurangzeb to their motorcycle and dragged him on the road until he became unconscious. 'He was dragged for some time and the police constable stopped his bike only when Aurangzeb passed out,' Afzal Amanullah, Bihar's home secretary, admitted in Patna, the state capital. 'This was an inhuman act and an unpardonable case of policemen taking the law into their own hands.' Mr Amanullah sacked the guilty men: assistant inspector of police Rambalak Singh and constable Ramchandar Rai. Their dismissal was a foregone conclusion after members of the national parliament, which was in session on that fateful day, demanded action against the offending policemen. Significantly, Chinamay Dev, the Bhagalpur-based television journalist who shot the footage, was forced to go into hiding because the local police allegedly threatened to arrest him and ban his daily cable news programme aired under the Progressive Television Network banner. The Telegraph newspaper declared: 'The spate of incidents cutting across the entire social spectrum and the urban-rural divide show how frighteningly violent civic life has become in India.' Mob action, it added, was invariably 'unspeakably cruel, irrational and disproportionate to the original offence as a sense of right and wrong is brushed aside by animal passions'. Social scientists analysing the gory trend say that the common man seems to have lost all faith in the criminal justice system of the country. So he does not hesitate to takes the law in his own hands and doesn't think twice before lynching the culprit. Police stations in rural areas are generally understaffed and corrupt policemen are often in league with criminals. The villagers say that if they hand over a robber to the police, he would bribe his way to freedom and commit crimes again. So they kill him. 'The tendency among common people to deliver instant justice reveals their lack of faith in the judicial system, just as 'fake' encounters or staged killings point to slackening faith in legal methods among the police,' said Arun Prokash Mukherjee, retired director of the Central Bureau of Investigation. 'But it is not clear whether ordinary people are following in the footsteps of the police or the law enforcers are taking a leaf out of the common man's book.' Psychologists say that lynchings reflect not only widespread frustration with institutions like the police, administration and the judiciary, but also with the lack of options and opportunities for personal growth in backward parts of the country, such as Bihar. Bollywood is also blamed for sending a wrong message by glorifying violence in film after film. Another contributory factor, say experts, is the verbal abuse and physical violence that legislators resort to, with impunity, on the floor of the national parliament and provincial legislatures.