NEW DELHI: Two people were arrested after an angry mob beat to death a man accused of raping an eight-year-old girl on the rural outskirts of New Delhi, police said on Sunday.

The man identified as Jitendra was set upon by a crowd after being accused of assaulting the girl in Ghaziabad district, just 20 kilometres from India’s capital.

“He was dragged out from his house and beaten to death,” said Ghaziabad’s rural police superintendent Arvind Kumar Maurya of 25-year-old Jitendra, who went by one name.

“We have arrested two people over the lynching. One of the two is a family member [of the girl] and the other is a neighbour.”

Police were also investigating the alleged sexual assault as part of their inquiries, he added.

Vigilante justice is not uncommon in India, and those accused of rape have been attacked or paraded through the streets naked as punishment.

Cases can take years to drag through India’s courts and aggrieved parties have been known to take matters into their own hands.

In February, two men suspected of raping and murdering a five-year-old girl in a remote northeast Indian state were dragged from a police station and murdered by a mob.

In 2015, a mob broke into a jail in another northeast state and murdered a man accused of rape.

Published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2018