Adivasi beaten to death in Kerala by locals; 2 arrested

In a bizarre incident, a tribal man was tied and beaten up by an unruly mob at a village in Palakkad district in Kerala after he was allegedly caught for shop theft. The man breathed his last while being taken to the hospital.

The man was believed to be unstable mentally and used to steal from local shop to survive, according to the police. He lived in a forest near the village.

On Thursday, some locals allegedly tracked him down, tied him up and tortured him for hours. Some even took selfies during the mob attack.

The police was called in only around afternoon and when the man was being taken away by the police, he vomited and collapsed.

According to reports quoting police sources, a case of unnatural death has been registered for now. Two of the seven persons have been arrested.

“The police have arrested two of the seven suspects in the heinous killing of Attappadi-resident Madhu, an Adivasi youth. I have instructed the state DGP to speed up the probe and take strict action in the case. This heinous act is a blot on Kerala’s progressive society. But I want to assure you that strict action will be taken at the earliest against all the culprits to ensure that such crimes, especially against people from communities that were long marginalised, are not repeated. Kerala as a whole should stay extremely vigilant to ensure that we continue to remain and progress as a caring, cosmopolitan society,” said Pinarayi vijayan, the Kerala Chief Minister, in his Facebook post.

“It was heart-rending to hear about the killing of an Adivasi at Attapadi. It is a shameful act, made worse by the fact that the killers took a selfie with the man who they had tied up. It shows a remorseless attitude. We cannot allow such crimes in our state,” points out MB Rajesh, Member of Parliament from Palakkad.

"Once a post-mortem report establishes how he died, we will take further action," said a police officer. Thursday's incident is the third mob attack reported in Kerala in the past few weeks. Earlier in February, a transgender was harassed and stripped by a mob in Thiruvananthapuram.

In January, a mentally unstable woman was beaten and tortured by three women in front of a crowd in Pallipuram. Her feet were burnt with an iron ladle. When a mobile video of the assault was circulated on social media, the police filed a case against the women.