Blaming the Modi government for launching a “rumour-driven lynching movement” in the country, Congress said “absolute anarchy, mob-frenzy and jungle raj” have become new symbols of Prime Minister Narendra Modi “New India”.

The party said a new spate of lynchings has taken place whereby child-kidnappers have become a new medium of rumour mongering and mob justice and blamed the government of “abetting” in many such cases and giving “political patronage”.

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It said within the last month or so, nearly 30 Indians have been lynched – five people in Maharashtra’s Dhule on Sunday, two earlier in Maharashtra, seven in Jharkhand, four people in Tripura, two people each in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Telangana and one each in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh.

“Absolute anarchy, mob frenzy and jungle raaj have become the new symbols of Modi’s ‘New India’. There is an unprecedented atmosphere of hate and violence.

“Rumour mongering, state-aided license to kill, decimation of rule of law leading to a ‘lynching movement’ have shaken our national conscience,” said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

“When the state gives the ‘license to kill’ with impunity and abdicates its solemn responsibility to uphold the rule of law, resulting in vigilantism, death and merciless killings of innocent lives, then each one of us should castigate it, decry it and question it,” he said.

“In the past four years, we have added a new word in our socio-political vocabulary and that phrase is ‘lynchings’. Under the Modi government, this new phenomena is getting a definite political patronage.

“What is absolutely reprehensible is that the state has completely abdicated its responsibility in the quest to add fuel to this madness. In many cases it has also assisted, aided and abetted such acts of violence and even justified and condoned them,” he added.

Citing incidents of lynchings in Assam’s Karbi Anglong, Tripura, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, Singhvi said: “What is most distressing that in case after case – the ministers of BJP-ruled states and its leaders have either been a cause of abetment or flagrantly justified this phenomenon.”