One person from Hyderabad was killed and three of his friends were injured when they were attacked by a mob at Murki village in Aurad taluk, about 40 km from here, on suspicion that they were child-lifters. The police took into custody 34 members of the mob.
Police said a rumour that the friends were child-lifters was spread on WhatsApp and it led to the attack. Among the arrested were two youths from Murki who shot and shared on WhatsApp pictures and videos of the car in which the victims were travelling. The attack happened on Friday. The arrests were made on Saturday.
Mohammad Azam Usmansab, 28, was killed in the attack. Mohammad Salman Alinor, Talha Ismail Qureshi, and Noor Mohammad Sadique, who were injured, were shifted to Hyderabad. The Bidar police said they had received injuries, but were recovering.
The three friends from Hyderabad were visiting their friend Mohammed Bashir Afroz in Handikera village in Aurad taluk.
Mr Afroz, who works at Hyderabad, invited Mr Talha, who had returned from Qatar, and his friends to his native village. After lunch, they were driving back to Hyderabad. Mr Afroz had accompanied them for some distance.
They stopped to take pictures near Balkut Gokul tanda. They offered chocolates to some children walking from Handikera to the tanda. This raised the suspicion of tanda residents who tried to assault them and chased the car. Another reason for the suspicion was that the brand new car had no registration number.
The mob did not listen to Mr Afroz who tried to explain that they were not kidnappers but his friends. Then, they tried to escape by speeding away in the car. Some residents of the tanda contacted their friends, asking them to stop the car carrying “child-lifters”. Some took videos of the car and shared them on a WhatsApp group called Mother Murki. In a few minutes, some villagers blocked the road with a fallen tree and boulders.
Seeing this, the friends panicked and tried to crash through the blockade. But the car hit the blockade and fell into a stream on the roadside.
Some villagers called the police from Kamal Nagar police station. But they assaulted the inmates of the car with sticks and stones even before the police arrived. When the police arrived, they were outnumbered by the mob.
IGP S. Murugan and SP D. Devaraja were camping in the village. Mr Murugan appealed to people not to believe social media rumours.
A case was registered in Kamal Nagar police station.
