Death due to stone-pelting also lynching: Union Min

New Delhi, July 27: The high-level committee set up to examine whether the country needs a separate and stricter law to curb incidents of mob lynching, will also bring cases of stone-pelting under its ambit, said Union minister Rajyavardhan Rathore, in a conversation with CNN-News18.

Speaking to CNN-News18, Rathore said, “Every violence should be shunned and condemned and you cannot politicize these incidents. When a cop is killed by a mob for doing his duty, it is also lynching and if someone dies of stone-pelting that is also lynching.”

The committee will consider all kinds of mob violence to formulate the new law.

The panel is expected to submit its recommendations to a group of ministers, who will then send it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi within four weeks.

Referring to a recent incident of a tourist from Chennai who died after coming being attacked by a group of stone-pelters in Kashmir, Rathore said the four-member committee on lynching laws will be expanding its scope.

Rathore has further invoked the death of a Jammu and Kashmir police officer who was beaten up by a mob last year to drive home his point on broadening the scope of this committee.

Last year in June, Deputy SP (Security) Mohammed Ayub Pandith, who was in civilian clothes, was caught clicking pictures outside a mosque, following which the officer opened fire with his service pistol, injuring three people. He was caught by an angry mob and beaten to death.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)