Photographs of a public lynching in Nagaland’s largest city, Dimapur, on Thursday, that have been swirling all over social media, are a grim reminder of the barbarity that lurks beneath the potato skin of civilisation as we know it in these troubled times. The shocking pictures tell us many stories, including how dangerously close we as a nation are to the precipice of frightening lawlessness.

First, the facts as they have emerged till Friday evening. Last month a complaint was lodged with the police, accusing Syed Farid Khan of raping a Naga woman (of whom few details are known at the moment) several times. That was on February 23. Khan, a 35-year-old migrant from Assam (reports say he was a Bengali-speaking Muslim) was a dealer in old cars.