India:Ten men suspected of theft were lynched by villagers in India's eastern Bihar state yesterday in one of several recent instances of "mob justice" as people's faith in police and government declines.
Officials said the 10 youngsters, who arrived in a vehicle in the Vaishali district north of the state capital Patna, were stopped by villagers who suspected them of being thieves.
They had set up patrols after complaining of robberies to an apathetic police force and, after offloading the alleged culprits, mercilessly beat them before hanging them from nearby trees.
The state authorities have ordered an investigation into the incident but little is expected.
This followed an incident at the weekend, also in Bihar, in which the eye of an alleged motorcycle thief - one of a gang of three - was gouged out by an infuriated mob in the Nawada district south of Patna.
These are examples of innumerable incidents in which mobs have caught alleged petty criminals and thrashed them ruthlessly before hanging or beheading them.
In most cases, the police fail to make arrests, citing lack of "adequate evidence" or eyewitnesses.
"This [mob violence] is an expression of people's disillusionment with the justice delivery mechanism of the state," said Rithambara Hebbar of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay (Mumbai). It is the failure of the state manifesting itself on the streets, he added.
In one instance, a couple were beheaded in the northern Uttar Pradesh state by the bride's father because she had married a man outside her caste. Neighbours did not try to stop him.
Delhi-based psychologist Aneesh Bawaeja belies that besides law and order, social problems like unemployment, illiteracy and backwardness contribute to frustration: "the government has to instil faith among the public. When the people feel they can depend on the state, there will be no need to take the law into their own hands."
