India: A man accused of beheading a five-year-old boy as part of a witchcraft ritual has been thrashed and set on fire by enraged locals

Tirumala Rao, 35, seized the child from a nursery inside a health center and carried him to his house. He then performed a prayer ritual before cutting off the helpless boy's head, collecting his blood in a vessel and sprinkling it all over his house. The incident was discovered when the victim's mother, named L Adilakshmi, went to collect her son from the nursery in Pokuru in Andhra Pradesh in south east India and found that he had disappeared. A family friend told her that she had seen Rao take the child and the distraught woman was then said to have gone to Rao’s house with a group of villagers. She found the beheaded body of her son in the corner of one room and his head in the other corner, next to the vessel of his blood. They then tracked down the accused, who had fled, tied him to a pole, doused him in kerosene and set him alight. As they lynched him the suspect was heard to have said that he could bring the boy back to life. He was found by police and taken to hospital for treatment, where he is in a critical condition.