Police officials in India yesterday charged 18 people after thousands reportedly stormed a prison and lynched a man accused of rape in the country’s northeast, as tensions remained high, a senior officer said.
Officers arrested the men for rioting in the state of Nagaland, but it was unclear whether they were directly involved in killing Syed Farid Khan, whose body was then strung up on a clock tower on Thursday.
He was accused of repeatedly raping a 19-year-old woman.
“So far we have arrested 18 people for rioting and unlawful assembly,” Inspector General of Police Wabang Jamir told reporters.
“We are now verifying if — besides being part of the mob — they were also directly involved in the lynching,” Jamir said by telephone from the city of Dimapur. “We have already identified many more people [for arrest] from videos and photographs [of the incident on social media sites].”
Several thousand people allegedly overpowered security at the Dimapur Central Prison while searching for Khan, whom the mob also believed was an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh.
The Bengali-speaking Khan was stripped and paraded on the streets outside, while men armed with sticks beat him to death, local media outlets reported.
Hundreds of riot police have been patrolling the streets of Dimapur since the incident, while Jamir said a curfew remained in place, along with mobile phone and Internet restrictions.
Tensions have been rising in Dimapur since Khan was arrested on Feb. 24 on rape charges.
The lynching comes as India is faces controversy over a government order to ban the broadcast of a documentary about the fatal December 2012 gang rape of a young student in New Delhi.
The nation has seen an outpouring of anger over frightening levels of violence against women since the 2012 attack, which sparked shock both domestically and around the world.
However, the lynching is also linked to ethnic tensions within Nagaland, whose indigenous groups have for years accused growing numbers migrants from Bangladesh of illegally settling on their land and consuming limited resources.
Khan’s brother, who lives in neighboring Assam state, on Saturday accused police of falsely implicating his brother in the rape to try to drive immigrants from Nagaland.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said that Khan had given her 5,000 rupees (US$80) after the attack in return for her silence.
“It was only after the incident; he gave me the money to keep silent, so I took the money and gave it to the police station,” the woman told the NDTV network.
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