Mumbai: Close on the heels of an incident in Jalgaon where three dalit youths were beaten for swimming in a well, a street mob on Friday morning thrashed a woman thought to be a child lifter at Avinash Colony, Valuj in Aurangabad. A video of the assault went viral soon after the incident.
Alerted by a few locals, a Valuj police team arrived at the spot to rescue her and later recorded her statement as part of the probe into the mob attack.
According to the police, the victim, Puja Gavai, had come to Valuj from Ranjangaon in the same district in search of rented accommodation, but locals suspected she was involved in kidnapping children and began beating her up mercilessly.
According to the police, the incident comes in the backdrop of a recent spurt in kidnapping cases that has made locals suspicious of strangers.
In another instance of mob violence in the same district on Friday, two men, Vikram Lallunath and Mohannath Bhairavnath, residents of Madhya Pradesh, were roaming around at Kasambari Nagar, Padegaon to beg on the eve of Id-ul-Fitr when a mob viciously attacked them with sticks on the suspicion that they were thieves. According to police inspector Shrikant Paropkar, the public assaulted the duo from 6.30 am to 9 am. The police rushed to the spot and rescued them immediately after receiving an alert and admitted the duo to a hospital.
Mob violence has been increasing due to a rising number of theft incidents in Vaijapur and Gangapur taluka, according to the police. On June 8, six people were beaten up by a mob on the suspicion that they were thieves, and two of them succumbed to their injuries. The police have registered an offence against villagers and Internet services were shut for five days to quell rumour-mongering.
