Brutal lynching of rape suspect in India prompts suspensions, judicial probe

A crowd of Indian men surround an alleged rapist after he was dragged out of prison and beaten to death in Dimapur in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland on March 5, 2015 (AFP Photo / Caisii Mao)

A crowd of Indian men surround an alleged rapist after he was dragged out of prison and beaten to death in Dimapur in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland on March 5, 2015 (AFP Photo / Caisii Mao)

India has suspended several officials and ordered a full investigation after angry mob broke into a prison, grabbed a rape suspect and lynched him on the street in the northeastern state of Nagaland.

According to the Indian media, protests in the city of Dimapur
began on Wednesday, with agitators urging the mob to seize a man
accused of raping a local woman and held in the city jail since
late February. On Thursday, the mob stormed the Dimapur jail,
seized the suspect, identified as Syed Farid Khan, 35, and
reportedly beat him to death. His body was dragged behind a
vehicle around the town square.

The police were reluctant to break up the “thousands” of
protesters by force, as the mob included many schoolchildren.
“There would have been a lot of casualties,” said L.L.
Doungel, Nagaland’s Director General of Police. Eventually, the
police fired on the mob, wounding five people. One of the wounded
later died.

Nagaland authorities
have suspended the district commissioner, the police
superintendent and the superintendent of the Dimapur jail
for
“failure to
control the situation,”
the Times of India reported. The
government has also increased police and military presence
throughout the state, trying to prevent ethnic conflict between
the Naga majority and the state’s minority communities. The lynch
mob had accused Khan of being an illegal immigrant from
Bangladesh, or a migrant from the neighboring Indian state of
Assam.

Akum Longchari, editor of the Dimapur daily The Morung Express,
condemned the lynching as “disturbing” and called for an
investigation into the “complete failure… of the state
machinery and how this incident was allowed to happen.”

Meanwhile, Indians heatedly debated whether the Dimapur incident
was an appalling instance of mob rule or a heroic action of the
local community protecting its women.

India has a troubled record of dealing with violence against
women. In December 2012, 23-year-old Jyoti Singh was brutally
gang-raped aboard a Delhi bus. Following mass outpouring of
public outrage, the government imposed harsher penalties for
rapists and set new guidelines for police. Four adult suspects
were sentenced to death, while one, a minor, received the maximum
sentence of three years in prison.

READ MORE: Delhi rape documentary being removed
from YouTube, at India gov’t request

One of the suspects, interviewed for the BBC documentary
“Daughter of India,” was unrepentant.
After his comments were made public by the BBC as part of the
promotional campaign for the film, the Indian government banned
it. BBC showed the film on Wednesday, but pulled it from YouTube
after Delhi’s protests.

Parallels have also been made with a 2004 incident, when an angry
mob of 200 women stoned to death and dismembered a man they
accused of being a rapist in the central Indian city of Nagpur.
However, the Nagpur suspect was apparently a serial offender,
whereas the man lynched in Nagaland may or may not have been
falsely accused.

However, the Nagpur suspect was apparently a serial offender,
whereas the investigation against the man lynched in Nagaland was
still in its early stages.

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