India's highest court on Tuesday asked the federal government to consider enacting a law to deal with an increase in lynchings and mob violence fuelled mostly by rumours that the victims either belonged to members of child kidnapping gangs or were beef eaters and cow slaughterers.

The Supreme Court said that “horrendous acts of mobocracy” cannot be allowed to become a new norm, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

“Citizens cannot take law into their hands and cannot become law unto themselves,” said Chief Justice Dipak Misra and two other judges, AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, who heard multiple petitions related to deadly mob violence.

They said the menace needs to be “curbed with iron hands,” the news agency reported.

The judges asked the legislature to consider a law that specifically deals with lynchings and cow vigilante groups and provides punishment to offenders.

India has seen a series of mob attacks on minority groups, especially Muslims, since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won national elections in 2014.

The victims have been accused of either smuggling cows for slaughter or carrying beef.

Last month, two Muslims were lynched in eastern Jharkhand state on charges of cattle theft.

In such mob attacks, at least 20 people have been killed by cow vigilante groups mostly believed to be tied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party.

However, mob attacks this year have been fuelled mainly by rumours ignited by messages circulated through social media that child-lifting gangs were active in villages and towns.

At least 25 people have been lynched and dozens wounded in the attacks. The victims were non-locals, mostly targeted because they looked different, or didn't speak the local language.

Although Indian authorities have clarified that there was no truth to the child-lifting rumours and that the targeted people were innocent, the deadly and brutal attacks, often captured on cellphones and shared on social media, have spread across the country.