Rajasthan: Mob ties man to tree, assaults him for an hour over theft suspicion
Police rescue 22-year-old victim who is believed to be mentally challenged. He was beaten with sticks, kicked, punched and tortured with chilli applied to his injuries.
Two people, including a priest, tied a man to a tree in a Rajasthan town and assaulted him with sticks, punches and kicks for at least an hour after suspecting him of stealing from a temple’s donation box.
Police said the victim appeared to be mentally challenged, and was unable to reveal his identity after he was rescued from the mob assault in Rajasthan’s Dausa district on Saturday.
The attack was recorded on video by members in a mob that surrounded the victim. It showed at least two people, identified by police as temple priest Umesh Das and one Giriraj, using a stick to repeatedly land blows on the victim. The victim, without any clothing on his torso, is seen repeatedly pleading for the attack to stop.
“The incident took place at around 11am on Saturday when the man went to the temple and allegedly touched the box where donation is collected. Suspecting him to be a thief, the priest raised an alarm and the man was tied to a tree where he was assaulted,” Niranjanpal Singh, station house officer, Bandikui police station told HT.
The police said the attackers also put chilli on the man’s injuries, leaving him writhing in pain.
The victim was sent to a mental health facility in Jaipur on Sunday.
Das, Giriraj and a number of unidentified persons who were in the mob during the attack were booked by the police.
Similar attacks have been reported recently in several parts of the country, with many ending in the victims being killed.
On April 1, Pehlu Khan, a 55-year-old dairy farmer from Haryana was lynched by a mob of cow vigilantes in Alwar who accused him of being a cattle smuggler.
On April 24, a group of four Sikh men were assaulted near Ajmer after accusing them of molesting village women. The charges were later proved false.
Less than a month later, on May 18, seven men were killed in Jharkhand by mobs of villagers riled up by rumours that child abductors were looking for targets. All the victims were innocent.
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