TEHRAN - India's Supreme Court has asked the government to enact a new law to deal with the rising number of cases related to mob violence and lynching.

There has been an alarming spike in cases of mob lynching in India in past few years, causing deaths of more than two dozen people this year alone, mostly from the minority Muslim community.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra on Tuesday asked the Parliament to enact a law to punish the offenders and stem the violence. “Horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be allowed to become a new norm,” the bench said. “It has to be curbed with an iron hand.”

The ruling was in response to a number of petitions seeking direction on containing violence by cow-protection vigilante groups representing radical Hindu groups who have been targeting Muslims on suspicion of eating beef.

This year, a report published in The Times of India said, there have been 13 incidents of mob lynchings, resulting in the deaths of 27 people, often in isolated areas and other crimes following fake rumours spread via WhatsApp, a messaging application.

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, there have been increasing incidents of mob violence and lynchings targeting Muslims and Dalits, said a report published in The Wire.