More than targeting a rape accused : Savagery coming to the fore
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: March 12, 2015 -

Unparalleled crime. Dragged out from a high security prison, repeatedly assaulted, stripped and then lynched to death.

It was murder at its most ghastly and savage.

The Sangai Express joins in condemning the ghastly incident that occurred at Dimapur on March 5.

The man or rather victim was accused of raping a college going woman and at the time he was lynched to death, he was not more than an accused.

A gulf of difference there is between a rape accused and a rapist.

The stand of the Government of Nagaland that it was not a rape case says something significant.

Not the time to ponder on the status of the man, but the sadistic manner in which he was done to death is something which cannot be accepted in any human society.

It was more than a coincidence that the man was a non-local and the woman who was allegedly raped was a local Naga girl.

Herein lies the question of whether the man would have been so barbarously killed if he had been a local man or say a Naga.

This is not just a conjecture, a question of what could have been, but something which everyone should ponder over with the seriousness it deserves.

This is why what happened at Dimapur on March 5 was more than just a murder.

Premeditated, it may not have been, but there was certainly a sense of purpose in the action of the mob and this is what should not be tolerated.

Already the Government of Nagaland has cracked the whip and placed under suspension some high ranking Government officials, but it needs to do more.

It should send out the message that the Government will not tolerate anyone taking the law into their hands.

Some suspects have been rounded up. Suspects for there is still that round of trial that should be held first.

This is what separates the mob that lynched the man on March 5 and a responsible Government.

It is not Nagaland or for that matter Dimapur alone which is guilty of letting mobs take things over for the other parts of the North East too have seen its share of mob violence.

Mob violence by itself is unacceptable but it becomes all that more abhorrent when the mob begins to toe the line of ‘Us vs Them’.

And what happened at Dimapur seemed to be like this.

More than likely that no one gave a thought to the plight of the alleged rape victim, with most of the ‘angry’ people lusting for blood.

So brutally killing the rape accused is not in any way going to soothe the pain and sorrow of the alleged rape victim.

It was not for the alleged rape victim that the mob was formed, but to satisfy their lust for blood. It this point which should be borne in mind.

Time also for all to think why people have so little faith in the justice dispensing process of the Government.

Would it have been easy to form a mob if justice had been dispensed with in the earlier cases ?

What happened at Dimapur some days back can then be said to be a cocktail of an insensitive Government and blood thirsty people.