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KARWAR: A disabled person from Uttar Pradesh who had come to the Uttara Kannada district to seek alms was mistaken to be a child-lifter and beaten black and blue by public on Wednesday morning before police rescued him.

According to police, Vijay Kumar, 22, was in Aghanashini village of the district's Kumta taluk. Since he was wandering about the place for some time, villagers grew suspicious and asked him about his whereabouts. When Vijay couldn't reply as he had lost his tongue in an accident some months ago, the villagers caught hold of him assuming him to be a child-lifter, tied his hands and thrashed him.

After a tipoff, police personnel rushed to the village and tried to rescue him. Even as cops made efforts to disperse the crowd, the youth was handed blows. Police found currency notes in his possession. The video of the villagers thrashing the youth in police presence gone viral on social media.

This is the latest in a series of worrying incidents across the country in which the public thrash or, in some extreme cases, lynch a person on suspicions that he's a child-lifter. A clutch of unverified videos on alleged child kidnappers has been doing the rounds for close to a month.

Later, the youth from UP was taken to the Kumta police station. Vijay told police he's from Uttar Pradesh and lost his parents in a fire accident three months ago. Because of the injury he suffered in the accident, he couldn't speak or express himself comprehensibly. Vijay said he had come to Kumta to seek alms during Ramzan. Kumta police contacted their counterparts in UP who confirmed that Vijay had a clean record and said he wasn't fully mentally fit because of his parents' sudden death. Police sent him back to UP by train.Police have warned people against taking law into their hands .

