Mob Lynchings: Nobody Killed Mohsin Sheikh - I

(This news article is three-part series. Part-I is published today.)

Mob Lynching in India: A Record – 2014-2024

Compiled and edited by Zafrul Islam Khan

Pharos Media and Publishing Pvt Ltd, Delhi

Email: books@pharosmedia.com

Website: www.pharosmedia.com

Then:

NEGRO BURNED ALIVE IN FLORIDA; SECOND NEGRO THEN HANGED

NEWMAN, Ga., Apr. 23—Sam Holt, was burned at the stake, near Newnan, Ga., this afternoon, in the presence of 2000 people. The black man was first tortured before being covered with oil and burned. An ex-governor of Georgia made a personal appeal to his townspeople to let the law take its course, but without the slightest avail....

-       Springfield (Massachusetts) Weekly Republican, April 28, 1899

Now:

On the morning of September 24, 40-year-old Saikun Khan – a resident of Barawas village in Rajasthan’s Alwar district went to the market to buy a new tyre for his motorcycle

He never returned...he was dead, his head crushed with a stone just outside the Baroda Meo police station ...

“ ...We suspect he was killed because it was evident from his attire that he was a Muslim. He was brutally killed outside the police station and yet not a single policeman came to save him,” says Irshad Khan, Saikun’s younger brother, his voice breaking.

- Muslim Man Killed, Head Crushed With Stone Outside Rajasthan Police Station, Wire.in, September 26, 2026.

A Decade of Mob Lynching

“Lynching” means any act or series of acts of violence or aiding, abetting or attempting an act of violence, whether spontaneous or planned, by a mob on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, language, dietary practice, sexual orientation, political affiliation, ethnicity of any other ground. (p.14)

Lynching - the word conjures up images of a dark period in the history of the United States of America.

It is now history how between 1877 and 1950, white supremacist gangs murdered 4,000 African Americans, while the government and the police looked the other way.

No one had the premonition that around eight decades after the United States, which frames itself as the ‘strongest’ democracy, had finally abandoned its barbaric practice of lynching, the ‘largest’ one - India -would rediscover this gory practice.

There are no official figures about victims of such type of vigilantism.

The government has till date refused to undertake any such record-keeping, nor has the thought of making a separate law to judicially expedite verdicts in such cases under some special courts has emerged in their deliberations. It is based supposedly on a specious plea that ‘lynching’ as a form of violence has not been included in the Indian Penal Code and this despite the obvious figures that such targeted hate killings of religious minorities, socially marginalised sections of society and women have seen a sudden eruption in the second decade of the 21st century which is related to the ascent of majoritarian forces in India’s polity and society.

One of the first cases of lynching in this wave of murders took place less than a fortnight after the swearing-in of the Modi government. Mohsin Mohammed Sheikh (age 28) worked as an Information Technology manager. On June 4, 2014, he was returning home with his friend when a gang associated with the Hindu Rashtra Sena – led by Dhananjay Desai – blocked his path and began to hit him with hockey sticks. He was killed on the spot. It was the first communally targeted killing in Modi-led India.

It was revealed later that the victim was wearing a skull cap which made it evident his faith and made him an easy target for these fanatics.

A Remarkable Resource

Mob Lynching in India - A Record 2014-2024 compiled and edited by Dr Zafarul Islam Khan in collaboration with M Zeyaul Haque and Shaheen Nazar and team of researchers which included Talha Chowdhry, Salman Naqvi, Ghufran Zaidi, Zillur Rahman Haidar and Nadim Ahmad is an important documentary work and analysis.

It “sheds light on a unique form of terrorism which has spread across large parts of India in 21 st Century viz, mob-violence, or lynching or “mob lynching” as it is called in India’ (p.7) It covers a period of Modi-led government’s first two terms - from May 2014 to May 2024.

Dr Zafarul Islam Khan and his associates deserve special kudos for bringing out this voluminous work which is around 750 pages long. It includes details of 1748 cases spread across 630 pages and another 100-plus pages comprising of different chapters titled ‘Lynching: The Normal in India’, ‘Indian Civil Society, States and Union Laws on Mob Lynching’ ‘Recommendations’ preceded by an Introduction throwing light on the definition of lynching, unpacking major reasons for mob violence in India and revealing how perpetrators of such killings are lionised or how the role of police in most of such cases is not found inspiring.

It analyses the scary scenario of how “saga of lynching has become a permanent part of our life since the NDA came to power and despite Supreme Court Intervention there is no let up and no sign that any stringent law will be enacted by the Central government” and how goons associated with right-wing Hindutva forces engage in this knowing fully well that no law will catch them.

It also elaborates how this new wave of violence started with violence over beef or slaughter of cows but has spread to rumours of child lifting, theft, or minor disputes over a parking lot, it is ‘building up more violent behaviour - from small to big reasons’. For students of mass or community violence, it also makes one thing absolutely clear that mob lynching might have become the new normal now but is not new to our country. We have seen it in umpteen riots like the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and Gujarat riots of 2002.

Perhaps it is important to bear in mind what Ida B Wells Barnett, who documented lynching of African Americans in articles, pamphlets, and books in the 1890s, ‘recognised lynchings as attacks against individuals but also against the “peoplehood” humanity and economic security of Afro Americans in the US’ (p. 9) or how lynch mobs act as instillers of fear in all of the African Amerikans to enforce submission and to emphasise limits of black freedom. Same can be said to be purpose of lynching in New India.

The First Signs

Perhaps the way the first lynching case in India - after ascent of Modi to power - the killing of Mohsin Sheikh unfolded indicates things were in store for all concerned citizens of this part of South Asia.

How All Accused Were Acquitted for Lack of Evidence:

From the very beginning human rights defenders alleged that the ‘police officers investigating the case were trying to cover it up’ (p. 101)

January 2017, Judge Mridula Bhatkar of the Bombay High Court granted bail to three of the accused ‘by observing that they were “Provoked” because the victim belonged to another religion

SC cancels the bail (9th February 2018) underlining that courts cannot make observations “coloured with a bias for or against a community”

29th March, 2018 - Judge Bhatkar, again grants bail maintaining that their act was not premediated.

27th January 2023 - Pune district court grants bail to all accused on the grounds that none of the eyewitnesses could conclusively identify the alleged killers. One of the prime witnesses and victim of mob rage turned hostile. (p. 101).

Acquittals reinforce the need to strengthen the system of witness protection in all such cases.