Five killed on suspicion of being child lifters in India

International Desk: Villagers in Maharashtra’s Dhule district on Sunday afternoon lynched five men, suspecting them to be part of a gang of child lifters, police said. According to the police, the incident happened in a tribal village of Rainpada of Sakri taluka in Dhule.

One of the victims has been identified as Dadarav Bhosale from Solapur district. The identity of the others is still being ascertained. The police have detained 15 villagers who were a part of the mob that lynched the victims on the suspicion of being child lifters.

Like the other lynching cases recently reported across the country, in this case too, the villagers attacked the victims based on WhatsApp posts that were being circulating in the village claiming that a group of child kidnappers were on the loose.

“The accused hail from a tribal village where WhatsApp posts pertaining to child kidnappers had gone viral. Based on the posts, the mob suspected them to be child lifters and thrashed them to death. We have detained 15 people so far and the investigations are underway,” M Ramkumar , Dhule SP told The Indian Express.

Dwelling on the incident, another official from the DGP office told The Indian Express that the victims had alighted from a bus a bus when the villagers who had gathered for a weekly market attacked them suspecting that they were child kidnappers. “One of the victims has been identified. The identity of the others is being ascertained,” the officer added. The bodies have been taken to Pimpalner hospital.

Source: Agencies
 

risingbd/Dhaka/July 01, 2018/A K Azad