The Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Hon. Mahama Ayariga, is calling for the crafting of legislation that would take into consideration the nature of the offence of lynching. Some of these cases, he said, could not be easily established in court because they involve a large number of people, which creates difficulty in investigating. However, the MP said ultimately, the most effective remedy is an effective criminal justice system. Speaking to The Chronicle newspaper on instant justice, he said carefully crafted legislation to prohibit such acts and also impose a duty to prevent such acts with a mixture of punishments and incentives could achieve those results. Mr. Ayariga noted that as a country, we should be careful at the way we handle suspects because in many of these cases, there has been lynching which involves suspects and not people who have been convicted. He mentioned that whereas in some cases there was strong conviction that the person might have committed that offence, those people should be treated as suspected persons and not convicts. “It may well be the case that they are not the people who committed the offence,” he said. The Legislator said those tendencies were mostly a result of some diminishing confidence in the justice system especially impatience with the speed of the criminal justice process. He noted that as we try to improve our institutions and continue to reaffirm commitment to human rights, there are practices that are a serious blot on our records. “This mob lynching for me is one of those cases,” Mr Ayariga stated. It would be recalled that the Administrator of the Goaso Government Hospital, Mr. Anthony Yeboah Boateng was murdered on Easter Sunday by a mob on suspicion that he was a criminal. The deceased attempted to explain to his attackers but he was not listened to. Until his death, he was also the Presiding Member of the Asunafo North District Assembly. Credit: The Chronicle