Church leaders and rights activists have condemned the public flogging of a man and woman accused of adultery in a northern Indian state. “The public flogging of man and woman is terrible and has disturbed me… I have read media reports and watched the video. No one can take the law into their own hands in a civilized society,” Archbishop Thomas D’Souza of Calcutta in West Bengal state told. D’Souza said the incident should not have happened in West Bengal as the state is headed by a woman chief minister Mamata Banerjee. On June 28, a mob led by Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress party members attacked the couple with bamboo sticks. A video of the incident went viral and showed more than 200 men watching the flogging. Lying on the ground, the couple were seen pleading for mercy and the man leading the assault was identified as Tajmul Islam, a Trinamool party leader in the Chopra area in Dinajpur district. According to the police, the flogging was ordered by a kangaroo court over allegations of an illicit relationship and Islam was arrested on June 30. The prelate has written to Derek O’Brien, a member of parliament and Trinamool party leader, “to take suitable action” against those involved in the crime. The National Human Rights Commission issued a notice to the West Bengal government after the couple was mercilessly beaten in Dinajpur in full public view. India is notorious for violence against women. The state-run National Crime Records Bureau’s annual reports have revealed a harrowing surge in crimes against women in India. “It was stated [in the video] that the woman was asked to end the affair! Why not the man?” asked Virginia Saldanha, a theologian and former secretary of the Office of Laity and Family of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Council (FABC). ” This is an unjustified, condemnable action, a mob rule, free for all with no parameters whatsoever and worse than barbaric,” Michael Saldanha, a former justice of the Bombay High Court, told.