Outburst For Public Hanging, Encounter Or Lynching Will Not Stop Rapes When Fear Of Law Can't

The nation has been left shell-shocked for the past couple of days after a series of brutal sexual assaults were reported.

Even before the anger and protest over the gang-rape and the subsequent death of a 19-year-old Dalit girl in Hathras subsided, three more heinous crimes against women have surfaced, two in Uttar Pradesh and one in Madhya Pradesh.

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For the past few days, social media have been full of calls for hanging, public execution, encounter killing, mob lynching, and other ways to kill the four rapists to give justice for the victim.

Vociferous calls for capital punishment

This includes ordinary people and some celebrities, who feel that setting an example will deter others from committing such crimes in the future.

But if history is anything to go by, it is clear that fear of law or other repercussions is the last thing on the mind of people committing such acts.

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December 2012 saw arguably the biggest of its kind protest in India following the brutal gang rape and death of a 23-year-old paramedical student on a moving bus in the national capital.

Thousands protesting

As thousands of young people hit the streets demanding justice for the victim, the then government tried the case in a fast track court and found four of the six accused guilty and sentenced them to death. One of the accused had died in jail, allegedly due to suicide, while another was tried as a juvenile as he was just a few months short of turning 18, at the time of the crime.

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The lenient punishment for the minor resulted in further protests and the law was later amended to allow minors to the tried as adults based on the nature of the crime.

While this was happening, the four men who were sentenced to death were making a mockery of the system, filing appeals after appeals at various court.

The family which lost their daughter went from one court to another for seven long years until finally the four men were hanged in May 2020.

The death penalty, which is awarded only in rarest of rare cases in India, has always been a controversial topic.

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Those in favour of it says the death penalty will help in reducing such crimes in the future, but others say the threat of death will only harm the victim as the criminals will try to kill them to prevent identification.

Rise in rape cases

There has been an increasing number of rape and murders in the country, especially after the POCSO (Amendment) Act, 2019 which proscribed the death penalty for aggravated sexual assaults on children below the age of 16.

December 2019 saw another dramatic incident, which many believe was an act by the police to satisfy the collective consciousness of the public.

On November 27, a 26-year-old veterinary doctor was gang-raped and murdered by four men in Hyderabad.

The accused were arrested the next day and on December 6, they were shot dead by police in what they claim was an encounter.

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The police said that they had taken the accused to the crime scene to reenact the events when one of them allegedly tied to snatch the gun from an officer and tried to flee, resulting in the fire exchange that killed them.

Despite the police narrative being riddled with inaccuracies, the encounter was 'celebrated' by a large section, and it even became a demand by the kin of other rape victims.

The family of the Unnao rape victim who was set ablaze by her rapists had in fact demanded that the accused in the case should be killed in an encounter.

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Even in Hathras, there is an increasing demand for the four accused to be killed in an encounter.

This is especially worrisome, given the track record of the UP Police when it comes to encounter killings.

Rise in police encounters in UP

Ever since Yogi Adityanath took office as the Chief Minister, there has been a number of encounters, where police shot dead many wanted criminals, which many allege were fake encounters and that those deaths were extra-judicial killings.

The most high-profile of them is the death of Vikas Dubey, a Kanpur gangster who was behind the killing of eight policemen.

Dubey who was on the run since the murders had surrendered to the police at the Mahalak Temple in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh.

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Dubey was being brought to UP via road when the vehicle carrying him allegedly met with an accident and the gangster tried to escape after attacking the police, who shot him dead in an encounter.

Just last week, Feroz Ali, a gangster from Uttar Pradesh who was being brought back to the state from Mumbai was killed in a road accident when the police car he was travelling in overturned in Guna district.

While encounters or executions may satisfy the crowds or make the families of the victims feel they have got justice such acts have not helped in reducing crimes.