An angry mob in northern Cameroon stoned a man to death on 6 January after being caught having sex with a 17-year-old high school student.

According to an online unconfirmed account, attributed to the Cameroonian daily L’Actu, Lamine Goche was killed by a furious crowd after he was ‘caught red-handed’ at his shop in a market of the town of Maroua, Cameroon.

The crowd was alerted by a street kid shouting ‘Samaroka! Samaroka!’ (the word for homosexual in the Fulfulde language).

Goche, a Nigerian by origin, was a wholesale medicine supplier who was also known as an Islamic teacher, an Oustaz.

According to the report, the fact that Goche was an Islamic teacher and described himself as a man of god, yet was caught having gay sex, particularly infuriated the fellow Muslim traders in the market.

Goche was lynch mobbed; the crowd reportedly stoned him to death.

His body was abandoned by the Muslim traders, leaving it for Christians to bury.

The 17-year-old was reportedly taken to the district chief.

One merchant said of Goche’s sexual orientation: ‘We suspected for years. But Allah did not give us an opportunity to act. … Today Allah answered our prayers and we surprised him.’

One of Goche’s relatives said he ‘chased away his fiancé after two months of marriage because the latter promised denounce his practice’.

But another merchant said no one had suspected his sexual orientation: ‘We had never seen him in action, especially because he was hiding beneath religious attire and pious behavior’.

Human rights activists are trying to investigate the incident, which was reported to have occurred in the extreme northern part of Cameroon.

Two months ago, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesperson, Rupert Colville, blasted Cameroon for its mistreatment of LGBT people stating: ‘Laws that target people because of their sexual orientation are discriminatory … we strongly oppose them and we obviously try and convince governments that have such laws to change them.

‘Many governments have had these kinds of laws and have changed them over the years so we hope Cameroon will do [so] as well.’

Being LGBT carries huge risks in Cameroon; same-sex sexual acts are illegal under section 347 of the penal code with a penalty of five years imprisonment including a hefty fine. If the offender is under the age of 21 a more severe punishment is likely.

In 2010 four NGOs published a detailed report indicating that Cameroon is one of the most hostile countries in Africa for LGBT people.