KABUL: Afghan police arrested five people near the northern town of Sar-e-Pol on Saturday after they were filmed beating a man and his daughter accused of robbery by a village fortune teller, the interior ministry said.

A video of the brutal public beating, which shows a man hitting a young woman repeatedly with a large stick while a crowd looks on, attracted wide attention on social media and local television.

The assault occurred earlier this month after a resident of Thughi village near Sar-e-Pol suffered a robbery and consulted a fortune teller to identify the culprit.

"The father and daughter were beaten by the village resident after a fortune teller accused them of robbery," the interior ministry statement said.

In May, film of a young woman being beaten to death by a mob in Kabul after she was wrongly accused of burning a Quran caused global outrage and underlined the vulnerable position of many women in Afghanistan.

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