By IANS
Ranchi : Three men were lynched in a Jharkhand village Thursday night, with villagers taking a leaf out of their neighbours in Bihar to allege the victims were thieves and that the police were doing nothing to stop a rising tide of thefts.
Residents of Tori village in Ramgarh district, 70 km from here, claimed they spotted 10 thieves trying to steal from a house Thursday night. The villagers caught three of the men and beat them to death, the police said Friday.
According to the villagers, cases of theft have gone up dramatically in recent months but the police have not taken any action.
“When the police failed to curb the rising theft cases we formed groups to guard our village at night,” said Shambhu Mahto, a resident.
The bodies have been taken to a local hospital for post mortem examination, the police said.
The police are now investigating if the victims of the lynching were thieves or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the 10 men lynched in Bihar a few weeks ago.
This is the second lynching incident in Jharkhand in recent times. Two months ago, five people were killed by a mob near Ranchi while they were allegedly trying to loot cash from a petrol pump on the national highway.