A mob in Karachi’s Mauripur area lynched a man on Thursday after accusing him of hurting a child.

The latest lynching comes nearly three weeks after two men were stoned to death in the nearby Machhar Colony area when locals accused them of trying to abduct children. The victims later turned out to be telecom workers who were surveying the area to identify ‘black spots’ in telecommunication network coverage, an investigation by Aaj Digital revealed.

The man who was lynched in Mauripur on Thursday morning was identified as Hatim, who, the police said, was battling psychological disorders and had become a drug addict.

Officials at the Hawke’s Bay Police Station said Hatim had hit a four-year-old boy with a stone. This enraged the toddler’s father Sher Khan, who along with other people, pelted Hatim with stones and beat him.

Hatim died on the spot.

The police arrested Sher Khan and were trying to get hold of other people involved in the lynching.

Aaj News could not immediately verify the account provided by the police on the death of Hatim.

Some reports suggested Hatim was accused of kidnapping children.

While no crime could justify lynching, mobs often accuse victims of wrongdoing before taking their lives illegally.

These accusations could be entirely baseless and merely a figment of imagination.

The two telecom workers who were stoned to death in Machhar Colony on October 28 were accused of kidnapping children, but when reporters asked local residents if any child had been kidnapped from the area in recent years, they could not remember a single incident, let alone name the allegedly abducted children.

The Sindh police chief later said that telecom workers carried in their car a first aid medical kit which included a vial of antiseptic Pyodine which the mob ‘mistook’ as a drug to kidnap children.