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India is a country where rape is unfortunately part of current events. Society usually ignores this but sometimes people protest against it and ask for justice. And sometimes, people take matters into their own hands. This is what happened on Thursday March 5 when an Indian man accused of rape was beaten to death on the streets of Dimapur, a city in the northeastern part of India.
A mob of thousands of angry people penetrated the city’s jail, took Syed Sirf Khan, the man accused of raping, exhibited him on the streets and beat him to death before police managed to interfere with gunfire.
The man was accused by locals of being an immigrant who came illegally from Bangladesh. On Feb. 24 he was arrested on the account of having supposedly raped a woman from a Naga tribal community.
Authorities are still not clear about how the mob went pass the armed police officers that were doing their rounds in jail. Top police official in Nagaland, L. L. Doungel said that because there were students in the crowd, police did not want to use violence.
He explained that because of the large number of people in the mob, “there would have been a lot of casualties. “
The Indian news channel NDTV showed videos of the assault recorded by people who were on the street at that time. One could see the accused Mr. Khan, apparently naked, marching down the street.
Authorities are still trying to find out how long he marched before police got to him. According to Doungel, he walked “quite a distance” between jail and where he was found. In order to get to the accused rapist, police, at one point, resorted to violence, firing at the crowd. One protester was killed and several others were wounded. By the time officers reached Mr. Khan, he was already dead.
According to T.R. Zeliang, chief minister of Nagaland said that investigations were ordered so they can understand how things managed to get so chaotic.
Akum Longchari, the editor of the Dimapur-based newspaper The Morung Express said that what happened on Thursday was very disturbing. He added that:
“For now, we must concentrate on the complete failure yesterday of the state machinery and how this incident was allowed to happen in the manner that it did.”
Image Source: Telegraph
