A 24-year-old Dalit man was viciously beaten to death by a group of locals in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram after he stopped to defecate in an open field that allegedly belonged to a man of a dominant caste.

A video of the incident that surfaced online led to the arrests of the accused men after the victim's sister filed a complaint with the police. The man, identified as Sakthivel, was reportedly carrying his Aadhaar card with him and when the men learned that he belonged to the Dalit community, they started brutally thrashing him. Sakthivel called his sister for help, who rushed to the spot with policemen and managed to rescue him. However, he fell unconscious and died by the time he was taken to the hospital.

A case has reportedly registered against the mob under section 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapons), and 302 (punishment for murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 3 (2) (v) of SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act.