Police arrest 22 people in India after mob lynches rape suspect

Thousands of people in Nagaland attacked prison to drag out a rape suspect, beat him to death for raping a 19-year-old

GUWAHATI: Indian police arrested 22 people on Sunday over last week's storming of a high security prison in the northeast of the country and subsequent lynching of a rape suspect, an act of mob violence that sparked protests in a region divided on religious and ethnic lines.

Several thousand people in restive Nagaland state attacked the prison to drag out a rape suspect, beat him to death and tied the body to a clock tower on Thursday, forcing authorities to impose a curfew to restore order.

"Twenty-two people have been arrested for rioting and attacking the prison complex," state's top police officer L L Doungel told Reuters.

Muslims in Nagaland and the neighbouring state of Assam protested against the lynching on Saturday and authorities put a freeze on internet and SMS phone messaging services after videos of the attack surfaced.

Police said they were struggling to identify people directly involved in the murder of Syed Farid Khan, 35, who had been accused of raping a 19-year-old Naga tribal woman multiple times.

Khan's brother linked the murder to ethnic tensions within Nagaland, whose indigenous groups have for decades accused a growing number of Muslim migrants from Bangladesh of illegally grabbing their fertile land.

Earlier on March 7, Riot police had also patrolled the city after the public lynching and enforced a round-the-clock curfew for a second day as the killing was condemned as “barbaric and inhuman”.

Read: Indian city tense after 'barbaric' lynching of rape suspect

The family accused police of falsely implicating Khan in the rape to try to root out Muslims from Nagaland. The lynching also follows an outpouring of anger in India over violence against women.

Khan's lynching coincided with controversy over a government order to ban the broadcasting of a documentary about the fatal gang-rape in December 2012 of a young student in New Delhi that caused shock within India and around the world.

Read: India bans broadcast of gang-rapist documentary

Defence counsels for the accused rapists had said a woman is like a flower and should stay indoors at night for she needs to be protected, BuzzFeed reported.

M L Sharma, counsel, added that in Indian society we never allow our girls to leave their houses after 6:30 or 7:30 or 8:30 in the evening with an unknown person. This is a reference to the fact that the rape victim was returning home from a cinema trip with a male friend at around 8:30pm on the night of the attack.

Read: Dehli rape film: Defence counsels say woman is like a flower, should stay indoors at night