Mob menace : A threat to justice delivery

IT Desk
Imphal, June 8: Hunt the owner if the dog bites. So is the saying in Manipur? And what is happening in the last couple of days here in Imphal is no difference. A psychopathic killer murdered a mother and her daughter and a suspect was apprehended. Without waiting for the investigation on whether the suspect is the real accused or not an angry people search for his owner, dismantle the house of the alleged murderer and ostracised all the members of the family from the locality for the heinous crime committed by a Psycho killer.
The trend is not new; these kinds of incident are common in Manipur society in the last couple of decades. There were incidences where minor children were punished by leaving them as orphan after their parents were lynched to death for the crime they had committed.  Nobody care and notice the fate of the children who knows nothing about the kind of crime committed by their parents.
Many mothers, fathers, brothers, wife and children had suffered and had to spend a painful life for the crime committed by their son, father or husband. And critics blamed on law enforcers and the justice delivery system of the country for the kind of the fall out. There were time when people had completely lose faith in law enforcers and that was one reason for mob to throng into action instead of waiting for the law enforcers to act.
At a time when mob justice was at its peak, the state government taking with due seriousness had tried many means to prevent the mob menace. Community policing, public interaction and many other had been organised.
Years have gone; the law enforcers now left few rooms for criticism. Many officers now spent sleepless night to solve cases of heinous homicide crimes. The last two three months saw at least seven cases of homicide. And officers in the police department have done enough by speeding up the investigation. The result – the person responsible for the killing of Lunglairung Rongmei on May 5 this year have been arrested and are now in judicial custody.
Similarly, within a very short span a suspect of the murder case of a mother and her daughter at Uripok Bachaspati Leikai here in Imphal on May 30 was also arrested.
What is surprising is that, even after knowing that the law enforcers are doing their work well, the mental dementia still continues.
It was the most heart shocking murdered, and the accused need to be awarded befitting punishment. But why the wrath of the locality poured to the family of the alleged accused is a matter needed to be seriously studied.
It’s time that we change the attitude of “hunt the owner when a dog bite”