Mob Justice On Chennai Streets, Two Men Lynched Within 24 Hours For Alleged Child Theft

Lynching on suspicion of child theft on Thursday claimed a second life in Tamil Nadu in 24 hours ¡ª a mob beating to death a man with psychiatric problems and stringing up the body from a newly-constructed bridge near Pulicat Lake, around 50km north of Chennai.

Thursday¡¯s peremptory dispensation of vigilante justice was the latest instance of a phenomenon now so alarmingly routine in the state that it has resulted in five murders in less than a month.

It took place a day after a group of people in Athimur, Tiruvannamalai district, around 170km southwest of Chennai, beat to death a 65-year-old woman from Chennai on Wednesday, on the assumption that she was trying to steal a child from the village.

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On Thursday, after rumours spread that groups of people from ¡°northern states¡± had been looking to steal children from the area, some villagers came upon a man wandering around in a ¡°suspicious¡± manner, a police officer said.

¡°Because the man would not answer their questions, they beat him up severely,¡± the officer said. ¡°The villagers gouged out one of his eyes, attacked his face and head and kicked him and stamped on him till he was dead.¡±

The victim was in his early 30s, investigators said, adding that they are yet to identify him.

It was not the lone attack on Thursday. Around 55km away, another mob attacked and severely injured a man, believed to be from north India, after they spotted him speaking to children near Poondi Lake. He is receiving treatment at Tiruvallur Government Hospital.

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In a reflection of just how out of hand the situation had become, the Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram superintendents of police issued a warning late on Thursday: People involved in such attacks would face serious action.

The local police said they could not get to the spot in time to save the man from the mob near Pulicat Lake.

¡°The mob had brutally attacked and killed him before we arrived at the spot,¡± the officer said. ¡°The villagers had banged his head against the edge of a pavement on the bridge repeatedly till he lost consciousness. They did not stop till they hanged his body from the bridge.¡±

Never saw him earlier, he was speaking in a strange lingo: Villager

Chennai: Witnesses told TOI that a group of distrustful villagers caught the man and tried to question him, but he would not say a word.

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¡°We had never seen the man in the locality earlier and he was just mumbling something in a strange language,¡± one villager said. ¡°Once some locals started to attack the man, they would not stop.¡±

Some villagers stated that they saw the man approach a child playing on the road; others said they heard a child scream.

But a senior police officer discounted the child theft theory. ¡°No one saw the man trying to take away a child,¡± the officer said. ¡°When we questioned people in the locality, they finally admitted that they had only heard that he was trying to steal a child.¡±

The Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram SPs issued a statement with contact numbers, asking people to alert them or the local police immediately to strangers in any neighbourhood and warning them against taking justice into their hands.