The country woke up to the yet another horrific piece of news on December 6. This time it wasn't a cold-blooded rape and murder of a woman or a survivor set ablaze, but four rape accused killed in an encounter.
Celebratory posts poured in on social media from public to politicians alike. People celebrated with firecrackers, distributed sweets and thousands took to the streets to hail the police.
"I can't put it into words. I felt happiness but also grief because my daughter will never come home," the victim's mother said.
"My daughter's soul is at peace now. Justice has been done. I never thought we would get justice. No other girl should experience what my daughter did."
¡°Justice¡± had been delivered. Finally.
When mob runs amok, anarchy becomes the law of the land.
Those celebrating the encounter are part of the larger narrative that promotes and celebrates violence, mob justice, valorises vigilantism and puts mass murderers in ranks of power.
The family of the 27-year-old vet who was burnt after being gangraped by four men in Telangana is relieved, and so are sundry activists and lynch-supporting politicians. But certainly, this wasn't justice.
Justice comes from the corridors of judiciary for that is the law. But this is also a big failure and a setback for the legal system of the country where citizens demand mob justice and "phenomenal" encounters, over the law of the land.
The piling up of rape cases and delay in justice fuels this outrage. When implementation of law is long-drawn in certain cases, such as rapes, people break the law and give a standing ovation to those who do. The primary fault is assumed to be of the legal machinery, which currently seems ineffectual.
Those cheering what Hyderabad Police pulled off in the dead of the night must be reminded that India also deals with honour killings, rampant in rural pockets of the country. These are typically carried out by close relatives and village elders to what is perceived as family's reputation in a rigid caste and class system.
United Nations statistics suggest 1,000 of the 5,000 such murders globally every year occur in India.
Additionally, over the law few years, India has seen a dramatic spike in the number of mob lynching cases.
Until August this year, according to data compiled by IndiaSpend, the country witnessed 33 cases of mob lynching since 2012, in which 340 people were targeted and 50 lost their lives. A large number of victims belonged to minority communities and socially backward classes.
Over the years, mob justice has been celebrated and glorified for reasons such as protecting honour and safeguarding one's fragile religious sentiments.
Nonetheless, in honour killings and mob lynching, police inaction and lack of speedy justice is plainly obvious.
And if mobocracy and lynch-mentality is justified in cases of rapes, honour killings and cow vigilantism, mob justice is well on the path to become the new normal. Democracy and judiciary will only stand to lose and become redundant.
A large section of the people thinks Hyderabad Police's encounter served justice to the family of the rape victim. They are also demanding the same for rape and sexual assault accused Kuldeep Singh Sengar, Asaram and Nityananda ¨C again promoting violence and lynch mentality.
As a country, we're now told that ¡°justice¡± has been delivered and the victim avenged. And now, peace, and law and order is restored.
When protectors of the law resort to such mockery of law and dramatised events to serve justice, they're pointing towards their own failure -- that they cannot enforce law and order, that they can't ensure public spaces for women are safe, and their inability to investigate crimes and protect rape survivors. In such scenarios, encounters/murders/lynching are conceivable justice.
It is an embodiment of collective failure of a society, its politicians, lawmakers and the law of the land. It is nothing but a mockery of the Constitution. If murders served justice, there would be no room or requirement for law. No need for the police, no need for the judiciary.
Such incident will only encourage more direct killings by people, firstly because they do not trust the judiciary and there is a need to satiate the demand for speedy ¡°justice.¡±
What we must know is that the four men were suspects. They were accused. They were not the convicts. Death penalty or capital punishments is for convicted rapists and not accused. Now, the country will never know if the four were guilty beyond what they had confessed in custody. Those celebrating will also never know if they were celebrating the death of real perpetrators.
Encounters are not deterrents. Instead, they cement the route for mob lynching and its glorification.