Bills passed against mob lynching in the past four years by at least three States ruled by BJP rivals and one governed by the party itself have not been implemented with the Union government taking a view that lynching is not defined as a crime under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The Union Home Ministry informed Parliament in 2019 that there was “no separate” definition for lynching under the IPC, adding that lynching incidents could be dealt with under Sections 300 and 302 of the IPC, pertaining to murder.
In 2017, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) collected data on mob lynching, hate crimes and cow vigilantism but it was not published and discontinued as these crimes are not defined and the data were found to be unreliable.
