MOB LYNCHING AND THE LAW: WHY INDIA STILL HAS NO SPECIFIC LEGISLATION

Every few months a video gets passed around phones before it gets passed around a courtroom a crowd closing in on one person fists and rods doing what a rumour started. The trigger varies: cattle theft, an inter-faith couple, a child-lifting scare born on WhatsApp. What stays constant is what happens after. There is outrage for a news cycle, a handful of arrests, and then a curious legal silence, because Indian criminal law has never quite known what to call this. Despite being one of the most visible and recurring forms of collective violence in the country, mob lynching has no statute that bears its name.