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Indian police arrest 110 people suspected of beating three men to death at a funeral

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Palghar in Maharashtra, where the attack took place during a coronavirus lockdown. (Getty)

Police in India have arrested 110 people on suspicion of beating three men to death at a funeral while a lockdown was in force amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Officials said the attack, in the Palghar district of the western state of Maharashtra, took place last Thursday when a crowd mistook the men for thieves, before dragging them from a car and lynching them.

Videos of the incident – the latest in a spate of mob-related violence and killings – are said to have gone viral on social media.

The men, identified as Sushil Giri Maharaj and Jayesh and Naresh Yalgade and residents of the Kandivali suburb of Mumbai, were pronounced dead at the scene.

Two of the victims were Hindu sadhus, a religious discipline in which the practitioner renounces worldly life, while the third was the driver of the rental car they were travelling in.

Police said they had arrested the 110 suspects, including nine youths, on Sunday and Monday.

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Local reports claim the attack happened following false reports spread online that the victims were involved in the abduction of children to harvest organs, including kidneys.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said authorities would take tough action and were also looking for people who had spread rumours and hate online.

According to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 map, India has had 17,615 confirmed coronavirus cases and 559 deaths.

Read more: Muslim man killed in new suspected India 'cow lynching'

On Monday, the country recorded its largest one-day spike with 1,553 new infections.

The death toll in Maharashtra stands at 232 after nine coronavirus-related deaths were reported in the state on Monday.

India has been under lockdown since March 24, raising questions over the lockdown measures in Maharashtra and how such a large gathering – when the attack happened – came to be in the first place.

Indians hold placards and shout slogans during a protest against mob attacks in Ahmadabad, India, Monday, July 23, 2018. A woman was lynched in central India on rumors that she was part of a gang that kidnapped children, police said Monday, days after the country's highest court called for immediate steps to control deadly mob violence across the country. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
Indians hold placards and shout slogans during a protest against mob attacks in Ahmadabad in 2018 after a woman was lynched following rumours she was part of a gang that kidnapped children. (AP)
In this Monday, June 11, 2018 photo, supporters of Nilotpal Das, and Abhijit Nath, who were killed by mobs, hold candles during a protest in Gauhati, India. Fueled by rumors of child kidnappers, and spread on social media, mobs have killed well over a dozen Indians in brutal attacks since early May. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
A candlelit vigil takes place for victims of mob killings in June 2018. (AP)

Mob attacks fuelled by false rumours on social media have been an ongoing problem plaguing police across India for years.

Many of these false rumours warn people that there are child abductors in their towns, driving locals to target innocent men who are not known to the community.

WhatsApp, in particular, has become a breeding ground for fake videos, distorted messages and disinformation, thanks to its complex system of anonymity.

Read more: Indian police make arrests after mobs lynch eight

In 2019, WhatsApp, which has more than 200 million users in India, faced criticism of its platform being used for the spread of misinformation, which prompted the Facebook-owned company to add a new feature to stop people from automatically adding users to groups without permission.

A series of mob lynchings, sparked by images spread via the app through these groups, is said to have claimed up to 40 lives in the country in 2018.

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