A New Investigative Paradigm

8 min readDec 20, 2021

A couple of days ago it was reported that a young man had been lynched in the premises of the Golden Temple by a mob of Sikhs angered by a presumed desecration of their holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib.

The ‘desecration’ was roundly condemned by all the usual suspects — sundry politicians and the media who condoled with the Sikhs on the damage their sentiments had suffered due to the alleged attempted desecration. Not surprisingly the idea that putting a person to death without benefit of due process is a criminal act which deserves punishment and not praise does not seem to have occurred to anyone except the uneducated.

It is not clear what the intentions of the young man were. He is dead. We do not know his name, caste or religion. We can only idly speculate on what his motivations might have been.

True to form, the Punjab Police has sprung into action and booked the cadaver for attempting to injure the religious sentiments of a group and thereby endangering the peace and amity for which our country is well known, except when we have festive communal disturbances. The fact that he may have been the victim of a thoroughly illegal lynching (murder actually) has been dismissed out of hand as hearsay by those well versed in the intricacies of the law. It is quite possible that he was struck dead by the Almighty for his temerity and not by human agency. In any case it would be both injudicious and inhumane to punish those who aided the Almighty in this enterprise. So we can conclude that he got what he richly deserved. After all in a generally illiterate society, offences against books ought to be punished more severely than those against the person.

Who are we to quibble at such conclusions by the learned? In any case, if he did not deserve to die, God will punish those who killed him, which is the principle on which our courts function, since with the uncertain and lengthy judicial process, it is God himself who finally calls the guilty to book — The Last Judgement as the Christians and Muslims call it. It is possible that there too we might have an enormous backlog and endless delay.

It is learnt that the young man was first apprehended by a Sikh granthi as he jumped into the sacred enclosure and then handed over to the sewadars of the SGPC. He was then subjected to ‘sakht’ or ‘ kadhi pooch-thaach’ as they call it in the vernacular, to ascertain his motives. Unfortunately he was not particularly forthcoming.

Silence being judged to be proof of guilt, he was handed over to the waiting mob of angry Sikhs. They then proceeded to impart some khap panchayat style traditional Indian justice. The victim, I am sorry I should have said the convict, was beaten, cuffed, kicked, pulped, defenestrated, emasculated, castrated etc etc and subjected to an imaginative torture regime in the few minutes that remained to him of life, as the crowd of hurriedly sworn in law officials (we are sticklers for due process) gave vent to their collective righteous anger at this appallingly outrageous crime against their holy book. As a lukewarm Hindu, I must applaud this zeal of our Sikh brethren for their faith. To cut a long story short, in short order, the young man was handed out his just deserts and despatched to kingdom come or wherever we go on completion of our earthly journey to await the Almighty’s judgement. Even his mother would probably not have recognised him after the crowd had finished their sport. But we can always do a DNA test.

The promptitude with which the case was heard and justice dispensed has impressed impartial observers of the Indian criminal justice system. As a result they have suggested that many investigations hitherto in the domain of the CBI in New Delhi now be handed over to the SGPC. This should speed up our notoriously tardy investigative and judicial process.

We can now look forward to a future in which all investigation into serious financial or terrorist crimes will be handled by the SGPC. Though originally set up to administer Sikh gurudwaras, the SGPC has over time developed great expertise in criminal investigation. That is not surprising considering the large number of unhung criminals who have been involved in its administration in the past, including the late, not so great Honorary Sant JS Bhindrawale.

So administering the gurudwaras has merely become a side show. The SGPC has clearly shown that it’s forte is criminal investigation.

A normal police investigation in India involves many trips to the police station to convince the guardians of law and order that a crime has indeed been committed. Once that has been achieved the policemen will usually resort to questioning the paternity of the complainant, the virtue of his mother and his mental capacity. If female the procedure is slightly different. In that case the complainant, especially in cases of sexual assault, needs to convince the police about her virtue and chastity. Finally after all this, if you insist, they might register a First Information Report (FIR), if it is not closing time yet or if there are no jurisdictional issues. Ji haan (Yes sir). Aapko Sadar Bazaar thane mein report likhni hogi (You’ll have to make the report at Sadar Bazaar police station. And there — Ji nahin (No sir). Galat hai (That’s incorrect). Gopinath Bazaar thane mein hi investigation hoga (The Gopinath Bazaar police will do the investigation) Unka ilaaka hai (It’s their jurisdiction). Zero FIRs exist only in crime serials on TV.

Of course this is merely the beginning of a very long process. It is possible that if born under the right stars, an investigation might take place and subsequently a prosecution. That will commence with the aid of helpful eyewitnesses, handily available for a small fee in any police or court precinct. These worthies will even swear to have been present at the betrothals of their own grandparents. Thereafter after lengthy adjournments, and waiting for recalcitrant witnesses, lawyers, judges, policemen and Godot, the judicial machinery creaks and strains into action. A fast track court might hand down a judgement after thirty years, give or take five. In other cases, we will not hazard a guess.

Thereafter comes the actual punishment. The investigative and judicial process itself is enormously expensive given the time and money required. The expense accrued subsequently in maintaining the convict in jail in the style to which he is unaccustomed matches those which went before.

A developing nation like India cannot afford this waste of precious resources.. The display of mob justice in Amritsar was laudable, short, sweet and to the point. Justice was delivered and seen to be delivered. The message was rammed home to all evil doers. No one has complained, least of all the criminal, who I understand acquiesced in the process and pleaded for justice to be meted out. That justice was served is proved by the fact that politicians cutting across party lines and both print and electronic media have deplored the alleged ‘desecration’ of a holy book and condemned the deceased roundly and soundly. Everyone is convinced that the victim richly deserved his fate.

We still do not know minor details like his name, caste or religion. It is of course possible in theory and perhaps even in fact, that if his name were Mustafa, we would perhaps have noticed a slightly different reaction. While sympathising with the Sikhs’ hurt sentiments and deploring the desecration, both media and the political class might have condoled Mustafa’s death. This lawless behaviour could then have been blamed on agent provocateurs of the sangh parivar who had infiltrated the crowd and provoked it to react the way it did.

Trusted sources have informed us that the young man was uncircumcised. This is confirmed by veterinary surgeons who happened to be present and thoroughly examined the convict before the crowd embarked on its quest for justice. It is quite clear that he did not belong to our most majoritarian minority.

Further in exculpation, not one of the many intellectuals who shed tears of blood for the victims of the so called ‘beef’ lynchings has objected to this very laudable example of street justice as displayed in the holy city of Amritsar. This only proves that we Indians are fair minded enough to approve of lynchings when they are seen as not proceeding from a mindset contaminated by Hindutva, thus attesting to the secular nature of this particular incident.

In fact the Golden Temple has now been purified by blood. We look forward to similar displays of such mob justice in future. Our justice system and the Supreme Court need to take notice of the despatch with which this particular case, though complicated by the intrusion of faith, religion and issues of religious procedure, was handled, since its pre-eminent position at the apex of the justice delivery system is in question.

With only about 60 million cases pending before the various courts in India, it is perhaps time to consider People’s Courts to clear this immense backlog. It is clear that a legal education is not, perhaps has never been a necessity for the administration of justice. As the incident alluded to above illustrates, a willing pair of hands and feet are all that is necessary. One can only intone Satyameva Jayate, Allahu Akbar, Sat Sri Akal, or Jai Bajrang Bali (or Amen if you please) and hope for more such events, like young Oliver Twist. If scheduled at prime time, we could perhaps also see a beneficial increase in viewership, always welcome to our media.

One only wishes that the celerity and alacrity displayed on this occasion would be extended to the administration of similar remedies for crimes like corruption, nepotism and drug trafficking which continue to bedevil the Punjab and the rest of India. But unlike alleged blasphemy or desecration, these do not evoke the same feelings of outrage. Apparently these are not even seen as crimes but as examples worth emulating. So perhaps that is hoping for too much. But time will tell.