FAISALABAD, Oct 8: Traders subjected two robbers to severe torture, leaving one of them dead, after a vendor was shot dead during a robbery bid at a jewellery shop at Mamunkanjan on Tuesday.

Two robbers entered the shop owned by Shahid in Purana Dakhana Bazaar, Mamunkanjan. As the shop owner put up resistance, the panicked outlaws opened indiscriminate fire. A bullet hit Tanveer Ali, a vendor present outside the shop, who died on the spot.

The traders retaliated the fire and forced the robbers to flee the market. They gave a chase to outlaws and finally nabbed them.

The furious traders subjected the both robbers to severe torture and tied one of them to a pole and dowsed him with petrol as the mob gathering there chanted slogans demanding the outlaws be set on fire.

Meanwhile, the police concerned reached there and tried to get custody of the robbers. But the traders would not hand them over to the police.

The infuriated protesters told the police that they would themselves give robbers an exemplary punishment in public to caution others who had made their lives a hell.

After negotiations with traders, the police managed to rescue the badly injured outlaws and shifted them to the Rural Health Centre at Chak 509, where one of them succumbed to his injuries. The condition of the other robber was also said to be critical.

Talking to Dawn by phone, a trader, Ashraf Gujjar, said the robbers had been looting people in broad daylight and police were nowhere to protect them.

He said a number of times police had been requested to increase patrolling in the area but to no avail.