LAST week, on the night of April 16, a shocking case of mob lynching took place in Gadchinchle village of Dahanu tehsil in the Palghar district of Maharashtra, around 150 kilometres from Mumbai. This incident must be strongly condemned and strict punishment meted out to those proved guilty.

What were the facts of the case? Why did it occur? And what is its political fallout? 

WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED?
Two sadhus with their driver were going by car from Mumbai to Surat to attend a funeral. Their names were Mahant Kalpavruksha Giri (70), Sushilgiri Maharaj (35) and Naresh Yelgade. They apparently did not have a lockdown travel pass. To avoid the police who would have stopped them, they did not go by the Mumbai-Ahmedabad national highway and took a detour by a small road in the remote rural areas of Dahanu tehsil which goes to Gujarat via the union territory of Dadra and Nagarhaveli.

This is an extremely backward and entirely adivasi (tribal) area. They passed Gadchinchle village, were briefly stopped and let off by the forest guard, but when they reached the Maharashtra border one kilometre away, the guards at Dadra and Nagarhaveli refused them permission to go ahead and turned them back. They came back by the same route and were again stopped at the forest check post.

Then the trouble began. The time was around 9 pm at night and the episode that followed went on for two hours. A crowd of 400 people gathered and started accusing the sadhus of being robbers and child lifters. A small police party came and when they realised they could do nothing against the mob, they called for more police, who reached after 10 pm. The mob overturned the sadhus’ car, broke the glasses of both this and the police car. Police had apparently escorted two of the victims to the police car and the third who was injured was in the forest chowki. When he was being escorted to the police car, all hell broke loose. Under the very nose of the police, all three were mercilessly lynched by the mob. As Kavitha Iyer wrote in The Indian Express on April 23, “That is key to the tragedy – and the probe: the arrival of the police when the victims were unharmed and their subsequent murder in their presence.”

Immediately after this incident, the police in order to cover up their negligence and dereliction of duty, went into overdrive and arbitrarily arrested many innocent people from several villages in the area.

For the last few weeks in the lockdown period, false and mischievous WhatsApp messages were being circulated not only in this area, but also in hundreds of tribal villages of Palghar district. They conveyed that robbers were on the prowl, they would not only rob but also spit in wells to spread the coronavirus and worse still, would indulge in child-lifting so as to harvest their kidneys. As a result, regular night vigils were kept by the people in several villages to prevent any such intruders. Roadblocks were erected outside several villages. The entire area was gripped by fear, hate and tension. The lockdown and the resultant serious problems of livelihood like lack of income and food, aggravated the situation.

The portal News Laundry published a detailed report on April 23 about the WhatsApp rumours that were circulating in this area for several days. He relates a very significant fact and attaches a screenshot of a WhatsApp message in Marathi that travelled far and wide. The reporter writes, “In a group of Palghar’s residents called ‘Batami Adivasi Samajateel’ or ‘News of an Adivasi society’, a user named Kamlesh Katela posted on April 14, ‘Friends, beware. On the night of April 12, 2020, thieves came to the villages of Ranshet, Vadhna, Nikne, Ganjad and Sarni. The thieves are tall and well-built, and they look like Muslims. (Emphasis added.) They peep through the windows of houses and barge in if they see children or teenagers. Friends, I request you to share this message in large numbers.” (To put it more accurately, the Marathi screenshot of that WhatsApp message says, ‘They peep through the windows of houses and barge in if they see children or teenagers and take them away.’ (Emphasis added.)  The reporter tried to contact Kamlesh, but his phone was switched off.

The above WhatsApp message is a very clear pointer that the RSS-BJP rumour factory was at work. There may have been more messages of this kind. This must be thoroughly investigated.  
Some gram panchayats reportedly lodged complaints with the police against such rumours being spread through WhatsApp. Two days before the lynching incident, on the night of April 14, a tribal doctor Dr Vishwas Valvi and his team, which was returning after distributing food to some villages, was similarly attacked by a mob in Sarni village. The police which came to rescue him were also attacked along with their vehicle. Other such incidents occurred in villages like Waki, Amboli, Zai and Saiwan. These incidents should actually have alerted the police and forced them to investigate and take action against the sources of such false WhatsApp messages, and reassure the villagers. The biggest failure of the police was that nothing of the sort was done. Had the police intervened, the tragedy could have been averted.  

As noted above, the role of the police on the spot at Gadchinchle village before and when the lynching took place clearly amounted to dereliction of duty. Why this happened needs a thorough investigation. 

The sadhus travelling without a lockdown pass through a remote area at night worsened matters. Due to this, they accidentally happened to be in the wrong area at the wrong time. Hence it is inconceivable that this was a pre-planned attack, and still more inconceivable that people from neighbouring villages would gather at the dead of night in the lockdown period to carry out this attack. And yet many of them were arbitrarily arrested by the police on the day after.  

POLITICAL FALLOUT – COMMUNAL COLOUR, TARGETING STATE GOVT
With two sadhus being killed, several BJP leaders immediately came out with their typical knee-jerk reactions that it was the Muslims who were responsible. A vile attempt was made to give the unfortunate incident a communal colour on both mainstream and social media.

The other main target of BJP attacks was the Maha Vikas Aghadi state government, comprising the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress. All attempts were made to attack, discredit and denigrate the state government for ‘allowing’ such an incident to take place. The BJP has been suffering from severe heartburn ever since the last state assembly elections in October 2019, when its tally was much less than expected, and especially when the Shiv Sena, its oldest political ally, was forced by the BJP to dump the BJP and make common cause with the NCP and the INC, to head the new state government.

Both the Shiv Sena chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and the NCP home minister Anil Deshmukh immediately and effectively blunted the BJP attack.

Thackeray in his address to the people of Maharashtra, clearly made the following points: The incident was not like the series of communal mob lynchings that have taken place in large parts of the country in the last six years, but was a result of misunderstanding. There were rumours for the last few weeks in the rural areas of Palghar district of robbers roaming at night, and this was the cause of the attack. There was no communal angle at all to this incident and no one should try to give it a communal colour. Over 100 people, including the five main accused, had already been arrested and strict action would be taken against those proved guilty. Two police persons had been summarily suspended. A serious CID enquiry had been instituted to thoroughly inquire into the episode.      
Deshmukh released the list of the 101 people taken into custody (excluding nine minors) to show that none of them was a Muslim. He also warned against communalising the issue.

TARGETING CPI(M) AND SECULAR PARTIES
When their communal card backfired, the BJP and RSS promptly began targeting the local opposition. Their leaders like Sambit Patra, Sunil Deodhar and many others put out baseless charges on social media that it was the CPI(M), NCP, Congress and Kashtakari Sanghatana who were responsible for the crime.

The RSS mouthpiece Organiser of April 20, in a report under the heading “CPM-Christian missionary plot emerges behind the Palghar lynching case; Another governance failure of Maharashtra govt”, spread the white lie that “the five main accused are said to be activists of the CPM.” After raving and ranting against the CPI(M) and Christian missionaries, it added, “Shiraz Balsara, the head of an NGO named Kashtakari which has links with the Christian missionaries is working to arrange for the bail of those arrested and are in the custody of the police. It is now being alleged that the local CPM MLA Comrade Vinod Nikole is the brain behind this incident.”

The RSS bile is directed against the CPI(M) MLA Vinod Nikole because he defeated the sitting BJP MLA Pascal Dhanare in the Dahanu (ST) seat in the state assembly elections held in October 2019. The CPI(M) has won the Dahanu (earlier Jawhar) assembly seat in all elections since 1978, with the solitary exception of 2014. The NCP, Congress, Bahujan Vikas Aghadi and the Kashtakari Sanghatana all supported the CPI(M) in the 2019 election.

None of the five main accused are CPI(M) members. In fact, there are ground reports that suggest that three of the five main accused are connected to the BJP. In view of all these canards, the CPI(M) has decided to drag Sambit Patra, Sunil Deodhar and others to court and will file a suit for defamation.

In the notorious Republic TV programme on the Palghar lynchings, Arnab Goswami as usual toed the RSS-BJP line, tried to communalise the incident and made a series of highly objectionable remarks against the Congress president. Zee News and some other channels also spread RSS-BJP canards.   

The facts of the matter are exactly the opposite of what the BJP is alleging. Gadchinchle village, where the lynching occurred, has for the last 10 years been the base of the BJP. The sarpanch of the village, Chitra Choudhari, belongs to the BJP. Now the Congress spokesman Sachin Sawant has brought out proof with photographs to show that two of those in custody – Ishwar Nikole and Bhau Sathe – are members of the BJP’s village booth committee. There are likely to be many more BJP men involved.

The PUCL Maharashtra Inquiry Report titled “Palghar Lynching: Triad of Rumour, Fear and Hate Propaganda” released on April 23 makes several important observations. It noted that rumours, extreme fear, suspicion and hate-mongering were a precursor to this horrific incident.