Police in north-eastern India say they have arrested 21 people in connection with the lynching of a suspected rapist who was taken from prison by a mob.<\/p>\n
Syed Sharif Khan was stripped naked by the mob, beaten and dragged through the streets before being hanged in Dimapur, the main city in Nagaland state.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of policemen have been patrolling the streets of Dimapur since the incident amid increasing tension.<\/p>\n
A curfew was also imposed in the city on Sunday to maintain peace.<\/p>\n
In earlier reports, Mr Khan was named as Farid Khan, but now police have identified him as Syed Sharif Khan.<\/p>\n
Police said Mr Khan was a Bengali-speaking Muslim trader from the neighbouring state of Assam. He was arrested in February on charges of raping a 19-year-old tribal woman three times.<\/p>\n
Mr Khan’s brother said he was picked on because of ethnic reasons. According to reports, the woman was related to Mr Khan by marriage.<\/p>\n
Thousands of people stormed the prison on Thursday and police opened fire to try to stop the mob, wounding several people.<\/p>\n
On Monday, police said they had arrested 21 men for “rioting and unlawful assembly” – it is unclear whether these men were directly involved in the killing.<\/p>\n
“We are now verifying if besides being part of the mob they were also directly involved in the lynching,” senior police official Wabang Jamir told AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
He said the police had “identified many more people from videos and photos” of the incident which were posted on social media.<\/p>\n
Many are asking how a crowd was able to storm the prison and then remove and kill one, selected inmate.<\/p>\n
The lynching happened in the midst of a controversy in India over the government’s decision to ban India’s Daughter, a documentary about the 2012 gang rape of a student in Delhi.<\/p>\n
But correspondents say the killing is also linked to rising ethnic tensions in Nagaland, whose indigenous tribespeople have blamed migrants from neighbouring Assam state and Bangladesh for settling on their lands.<\/p>\n
Vigilante justice is not unheard of in India but it is rarely seen on this scale.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police in north-eastern India say they have arrested 21 people in connection with the lynching of a suspected rapist who was taken from prison by a mob. Syed Sharif Khan was stripped naked by the mob, beaten and dragged through the streets before being hanged in Dimapur, the main city in Nagaland state. Hundreds of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":97592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[38,14],"yoast_head":"\n