India, April 5 -- On Wednesday, in the Muslim-majority enclave of Mothabari in Malda district near the Bangladesh border, a mob's fury over names missing from electoral rolls erupted into a brazen assault on judicial officers appointed under Supreme Court mandate to cleanse voters' lists.

The immediate spark was the Election Commission of India's (ECI's) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, a mammoth exercise that flagged 1.36 crore voters state-wide under the "Logical Discrepancy" category. These names-neither deleted nor retained-were slapped with an "Under Adjudication" tag, effectively suspending their voting rights pending verification.

Seven judicial officers-three of them women-and a five-year-old child were held ...