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Four sadhus were allegedly assaulted by a mob in Maharashtra’s Sangli district on suspicion of being child-lifters, police said.
The sadhus (religious ascetics), however, lodged no complaint over the incident which took place on Tuesday, even as its video went viral.
The incident took place at Lavanga village in Jat tehsil when the four men hailing from Uttar Pradesh were heading towards the temple town of Pandharpur from Bijapur in Karnataka in a car.
They had halted at a temple in the village on Monday. While resuming the journey on Tuesday, they asked a boy for directions, a police official said.
This led some locals to suspect that they were part of criminal gangs which abduct children.
“There was an argument. It escalated quickly and the sadhus were allegedly beaten up with sticks by locals,” the official said.
A police team reached the spot and found the sadhus were members of an ‘akhada’ in Uttar Pradesh, he said.
Earlier, a similar incident had occurred when three sadhus from Kandivali in Mumbai were headed towards Surat in a car to attend a funeral on Thursday night. Their vehicle was stopped in Palghar district. The trio were dragged out of their car and beaten to death on suspicion that they were thieves. The deceased were identified as Chikne Maharaj Kalpavrukshagiri (70), Sushilgiri Maharaj (35), and their car driver Nilesh Telgade (30).
