A disturbing trend has emerged in various states where authorities are taking on the role of judge, jury and hangman and allegedly demolishing the houses of accused persons in order to teach them a lesson for the crimes they committed.
Recently, a video emerged where a 24-year-old man, Pankaj Tripathi, was seen thrashing his 19-year-old girlfriend after she asked him to marry her. The man, a driver, was a resident of Dhera village in the Mauganj area of Madhya Pradesh; the incident took place in the state’s Rewa district.
Following the incident, the state government ordered the demolition of his illegal house by a bulldozer. MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan immediately took to Twitter to announce that the accused had been arrested and his driving license cancelled. The town inspector was also suspended for allegedly trying to get the matter settled. No one who commits atrocities on women in the land of Madhya Pradesh will be spared,’ Chouhan tweeted.
According to the police, in the video, the accused is seen repeatedly kicking and slapping the woman. He was previously detained under IPC Section 151 disturbing public peace) and later released. After the video went viral, a case was filed under Section 323 voluntarily causing hurt) and other relevant provisions. The victim also filed a complaint against the person who shot and distributed the video, and a case was filed under the Information Technology Act, according to the police.
The larger question is whether the authorities were acting within law by demolishing the house of the accused. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is a maxim that has been labelled as primitive. The notion that crime and the punishment should be commensurate does not always work.
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