UP to slap NSA against those peddling ‘child lifting’ rumours

Lucknow: Rumours of child theft have suddenly spiked in north Indian states, especially Uttar Pradesh (UP), leading to unwarranted incidents of mob lynching in which as many as 11 people have died so far after getting beaten by public. The gravity of these rumours and the havoc wreaked due to this is such that Yogi Adityanath-led UP government last week decided to slap the National Security Act (NSA) against people found involved in rumour mongering over child lifting. As per reports, child lifting rumors are being prominently circulating in UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Past incidents In 2019, seven including a telecom Engineer were mercilessly beaten by villagers in Kasganj after some people suspected them of child theft. The people also vandalized their car. Similar incidents have time to time been reported in Aligarh, Ayodhya, Raebareli and Pratabgarh districts. In another case, people had caught hold of a woman, who they claimed was dragging a 10-year-old girl, in the Gorahi locality within the Salon police station limits. She was detained and after investigation she was found to be innocent. In another case from Raebareli, four men were beaten over suspicion in early 2022. Similarly, in Majharganj Majre Bahai village under Lalganj Kotwali, a young man, who had got down from his SUV after it developed a snag, was targeted by the locals, suspecting him to be a child-lifter. The villagers hurled stones at the man, who somehow managed to convince them of his innocence. In Aligarh, recently a man was beaten by people, while in Lucknow, people cornered a suspect in Chowk area on suspicion of child-lifting and roughed him up after tying him to an electricity pole. In Ayodhya, police nabbed a woman after Chief Medical Secretary complained that she was spreading child-lifting rumours among the attendants in the district hospital. In Jaunpur and Unnao, people targeted a specially-abled man and woman for the same reason. Are rumours related to actual cases of kidnapping? As per a report by IndiaSpend, fears of child-lifting are unfounded and exaggerated. “There is no correlation because the instigators of this violence are not prompted by a genuine fear of kidnapping,” it said. The violence is also indicative of how people have lost faith in law enforcement and criminal justice systems to act decisively against child lifting, the report said, adding, “Losing faith in the law of the land is a serious threat to society.” Mob psyche is different from individual psyche, it said adding When an individual acts, there is a sense of responsibility, but in a mob, there is a dispersion of responsibility and guilt.” The mob justifies its act as heroism to save the community, their identity, their children, themselves. Preventive measures Reports say that police have a major role to play in stopping such rumours from spreading. The police authorities in UP have already been told to up their game in terms of manual surveillance of gangs that are carrying out these kidnappings in order to assure people that police are keen to investigate such cases. Apart from this, the cops in UP have also been asked to organize chaupal in all regions. So that they remain in talks with the villagers and what is happening in their area. For these chaupaals, the cops have also been asked to rope in admin officials on district and block level. (With inputs from agencies)