The figure is horrendous and must make the authorities stand up and take notice. In the last six months only, nearly 70 people have fallen victim to mob beating, according to a human rights organisation report. And as much as the home minister would want to have us believe that the spate of mob killings is a manifestation of mere public anger, we could not accept such a simplistic explanation of a serious social malevolence. And to leave it at that would be exposing us to more peril from an affliction that the society is being increasingly plagued with. 

And even if it were public anger that caused the mob to administer its own justice, the administration must reflect on why there is mob anger at all! It would be dangerous not to see these cases as reflecting increasing frustration with spiralling crime and the apparent inaction of authorities to combat it. The anger is due to the fact that the common man is gradually losing faith in the police as much as in the justice system where the police become stakeholders and where cases are destroyed through money or political influence. How does one explain the fact that some murders have been registered as deaths due to mob beating? How does one explain the fact that police allowed the mob to beat a man to death on suspicion that he was a robber, or that they were late to react in preventing such incidents? 

It is the police which must act first to put stop to this practice, and that should start with committing the perpetrators to the law. It is the rectification of the agencies' systemic flaw that should merit equal importance.