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Updated: Sep 13, 2019 02:41 IST

A 70-year-old priest died after he was allegedly attacked by a mob on suspicion of being a child lifter in Panhai village of Uttar Pradesh’s Chitrakoot, the police said on Thursday.

According to Manikpur station house officer (SHO) KK Mishra, the victim, Ram Bharosey from Shahjahanpur, was staying at a temple in a nearby village and ventured into Panhai, where people, driven by rumours of child-lifting, became suspicious because of his attire. Just when he was being questioned about why he had come to the area, some people grew restless and began beating him up. This continued for 30 minutes before police was called in, he said.

“He was barely breathing when emergency response team Dial 100 reached the site of the incident and somehow managed to rescue Ram Bharosey, who was in a critical condition. The mob even attacked the police team,” Mishra said.

Bharosey was taken to local hospital that referred him to the district hospital in Karvi, but he died before he could be shifted, the SHO said, adding that the police is trying to identify the people involved in the attack and will soon will make arrests.

The police was looking for any footage of the assault that some locals may have filmed on their mobile phones, he said. “We have registered a first information report (FIR) against unknown persons,” the police officer said.

Bharosey was living in temples and mutts in the region since many years, the police said.

Uttar Pradesh has been witnessing a series of mob attacks on suspicion of child kidnapping.

In Kanpur and Bundelkhand, more than 20 cases of people assaulting individuals have been reported in the past fortnight.