A man pleads for his life from a mob incited by false allegations of child abduction circulated on WhatsApp. Credit:YouTube "Not a single case of child abduction has been reported in this area," said Shrikant Khotre, the assistant superintendent of police in Ghatsila, where one of the victims lived. "The mobs have intentionally killed these men," said Animesh Naithany, the deputy superintendent of police in Jharkhand. "They knew they were taking the law into their hands, and instead of turning them in to the police they killed them." Naithany said the police were still investigating who was behind the WhatsApp messages. Episodes of mob violence occur with numbing regularity in India, typically without a great deal of scrutiny except when they are religiously motivated or involve attacks on women.

Relatives of Abu Hanif wail during his funeral in Naramari village in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. Two Muslim men, including Hanif, were beaten to death by a mob over allegations of cow theft in late April. In March, a mob outside New Delhi attacked two Nigerian students after an unsubstantiated report that Africans had sold drugs to an Indian student who later died of an overdose. In April, a 55-year-old Muslim man was killed in the state of Rajasthan after he was attacked by a crowd of about 200 Hindu vigilantes who believed he was transporting cows to slaughter. Cows are sacred in Hinduism. Two young men were beaten to death over allegations of cow theft in northeastern state of Assam, while this month one person was killed and 16 injured in Uttar Pradesh when the Dalit community clashed with another group. Villagers watch men bury their relatives Abu Hanif, 16, and Reaz Uddin, 18, who were beaten to death by a mob. Analysts and officials say the vigilante violence stems from a variety of problems with the police and the judiciary. India has a low number of police officers per capita, and those on the job are often poorly trained, unprofessional and corrupt. Morale is low thanks to meager pay, long hours and little or no vacation time.

The judicial system is in perpetual crisis, with more than 40 per cent of high court judgeships unfilled. This has produced an enormous backlog of cases, leading to long delays during which witnesses may die, flee or simply disappear. The problems have convinced many Indians, particularly the indigent and illiterate, that if they are to have any justice at all, they must take the law into their own hands. In an interview, Uttam Verma, a survivor of one of the mob attacks last week, recounted the terrifying series of events. Verma, 31, said he and his younger brother, Vikas, had ridden a motorcycle into the village of Nagadih, on the outskirts of Jamshedpur, the steel-producing city where they live. They were looking for land to start a business making septic tanks. "A little into the village, the road was obstructed by a pipe, and the villagers were sitting around armed with bows and arrows, axes and swords," Verma said. Verma said that he urged Vikas to turn back but that his brother insisted they continue looking for the land.

A group of villagers stopped them and accused them of being child thieves, Verma said. They demanded to see the brothers' identification, which he had, but his brother did not. The brothers called home, and another brother, Gautam, and a friend, Gangesh Gupta, rushed to the scene, along with the Vermas' grandmother. Before long, the crowd began attacking the group with bricks, sticks and swords, Verma said. "We just could not comprehend what was happening," he said. The crowd spoke a tribal language that he and his brother did not understand well. "People started coming out of their homes, and the mob kept getting bigger," he said. Police officers arrived at the scene but did not help them, he said.

"The policemen said: 'Are they child stealers? Let's put them in the vehicle and take them,'" Verma said. Verma escaped, but the others could not. "The next I saw of my brothers was as dead bodies," he said, weeping. His grandmother was in the hospital recovering from her injuries. Prashant Anand, the superintendent of police in Jamshedpur, who is leading the investigation, said the mob far outnumbered the police.

He said the police had arrested five people and identified 17 as suspects. The head of the village is a suspect, but he has not yet been arrested, Anand said. There were more than 500 people in the crowd trying to kill the three victims, Anand said, and only four police officers with the station head at the scene. The same day, about an hour's drive away, four cattle traders were attacked by a mob, the police said. At least one of the men, Mohammad Naeem, was in the area to attend a family event, said Khotre, the assistant superintendent of police in Ghatsila, where Naeem lived. A video shows Naeem surrounded by a mob of stick-wielding men. At one moment, his white undershirt covered with blood, he sits on the ground with his hands folded, apparently begging for his life. Naithany, the deputy police superintendent in Jharkhand, said the vigilante mobs had sprung seemingly from nowhere, prompted by the WhatsApp messages.

"Rumours of children being abducted spread on WhatsApp like wildfire," he said. "Villagers started keeping vigil around their villages. Since they are an illiterate lot, they cannot differentiate between a real piece of news and a rumour." This isn't the first time WhatsApp has been linked to mayhem and mob violence in India. The Hindustan Times reported that in 2013, messages sent on WhatsApp helped to incite riots in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh state, while false reports of a salt shortage in North India last year created panic, rising prices and the death of a woman who slipped and fell into a drainpipe during a panic-buying incident. Loading Naithany said 20 people from the mob had been arrested on murder and rioting charges. An investigative team will submit a report within a month. The officers in charge of the police stations near both attacks have been suspended. New York Times