Another day and another brutal reminder of how the menace of violence, that too, in the name of justice, refuses to leave our country. All it took for a group of enraged five men was a supposed accusation of donkey theft, to chase down a suspect and gouge out his eyes, leaving him nearly blind. That the act of unimaginable pain was carried out to settle some petty land dispute, and only weeks after a tourist was brutally lynched (his body set on fire in Swat Valley) makes the episode far more intolerable. The sheer inhumanity raises serious concerns about the moral compass of those who engage in such actions. Although one of the accused has been arrested, the other four are still roaming free; speaking volumes about the lack of will to defend the writ of the state. Even if the preliminary investigation gets completed with due diligence, our law enforcement authorities record is littered with examples of the accused using loopholes in the criminal justice system to evade accountability for their crimes. Call it a consequence of simmering frustration in the masses or a prevailing sense of impunity but mere suspicions are fast-becoming enrage mobs to become both judge and executioner. Shouldn’t the significant decline in public trust in law enforcement be a serious issue for the state? Gruesome incidents of violence that have occurred as a result of residents taking matters into their own hands are nothing short of barbaric. This ticking bomb cannot be ignored any longer. Unless examples are made out of the perpetrators of heinous acts who take the law into their own hands; bypass the legal system and resort to unimaginable violence as a means of punishment, there’s little that can improve on the ground. Theft or no theft, a functional, thriving society cannot allow these arbitrary, law-of-the-jungle resolutions to undermine the rule of law; putting innocent lives at risk. *