Why is Mob violence an anti-social activity ?
Answers
In Meghalaya, a local dispute snowballed into a major law and order problem in the capital Shillong. Videos of mob violence and pitched battles with the police were posted on social media. The ripple effects were felt as far away as Punjab.
In the winter of 2015, peninsular India was battered by the retreating monsoons that killed more than 500 people in cities dotting the south-eastern water margin and displaced more than 1.8 million citizens. Chennai was drowned in the unprecedented deluge, but what kept hope floating in the affected communities were the interactive social media. As conventional phone lines went dead, Facebook and WhatsApp became the platforms for residents marooned in the flooded townships to tell the world that they were safe – but needed urgent relief.
However, recent events show that unregulated messaging on the social media could rather harm law enforcement than help it. In India’s northeast, where militancy has stunted development for decades and the security forces are never too far from the town centre, unregulated social media may have played a major role in fanning recent incidents of mob violence in the volatile region.
In parts of Assam, the most populous north-eastern state and home to various indigenous tribes, a Facebook post had gone viral: It claimed that several child abductors from Bihar have entered Assam and are active along the Assam-Nagaland border – a thickly forested and mountainous terrain that is still difficult to police. The message was shared over WhatsApp and other social media platforms across most parts of Assam.
It was in this backdrop that two men from Guwahati - audio engineer Nilotpal Das and businessman Abhijeet Nath - visited the remote Kangthilangso waterfall in the KarbiAnglong district, around 260km from Assam’s capital. The two apparently had an altercation with Alphajoz Timung, the man who allegedly incited a mob to lynch the two visitors in KarbiAnglong on June 8.
Timung called up some people in Panjuri village and asked the mob to intercept a black SUV used by the duo. His text messages to villagers claimed that the two were child abductors and trying to escape with a minor boy.
The killing of the two men triggered angry reactions across the state. While prayer meetings were held, hate messages targeting the Karbi community now started mushrooming in different areas. Most of the protests were live streamed on Facebook.