Mumbai/Guwahati/Chennai: Another five persons fell prey to child lifting rumours on Sunday, this time in a small Maharashtra village. In a separate incident, two other migrant workers were severely thrashed in Tamil Nadu on similar suspicions while a mentally-challenged woman was also meted out with similar treatment in Assam on Friday night.
In Maharashtra's Dhule district, one of the five deceased was apparently trying to talking to a child when locals who had gathered for a weekly market, pounced on the five.
According to the Dhule police, WhatsApp rumours on a gang of child kidnappers roaming in the village was already doing the rounds for the past few days.
Police said, the five, along with a few others, were seen getting down from a state transport bus in the tribal Rainpada hamlet, soon after which they were murdered by the angry mob.
In another incident, two migrant labourers were thrashed by locals over suspicions of them abducting a child. They were seen with a child in Chennai’s Teynampet when a mob attacked them. The two were rescued and admitted to a hospital.
"The child's mother happen to be the labourers' previous house owner and when she had gone to a nearby shop; the two men were seen by some local men patting the child," a police official told PTI.
In Assam, a mentally-challenged woman was tied to a pole and tortured by a village mob, suspecting her to be a child-lifter at Sonitpur in Assam.
The woman was seen aimlessly roaming in the area people started questioning her. After she failed to answer them owing to her illness, the locals tied her up to a pole to torture her.
The injured woman was taken to the hospital and currently she is undergoing treatment.
Last month, two young men were brutally lynched by a mob in Assam's Karbi Anglong causing massive outrage across the nation.
Rumours spread mostly on mobile messaging app WhatsApp has so far claimed over a dozen people across several states in the country in the past months. While state administrations and governments have taken multiple steps to prevent people from falling for such rumours, it seems to have no effect on many.
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