Disabled Indian woman tied to tractor and beaten to death by lynch mob 'after being mistaken for child kidnapper'

Victim brutally pelted with stones and beaten with sticks during horrific three-hour ordeal

The woman was tied to a tractor before being killed (Screengrab)

A lynch mob tied a disabled woman to a tractor and beat her to death after reportedly falsely accusing her of kidnapping a child.

The victim, aged 42, was brutally pelted with stones and lashed with sticks for three hours by villagers in West Bengal, India.

Footage of her horrific ordeal came after a local father wrongly claimed she had been trying to snatch his 10-year-old daughter on Tuesday, according to India Today.

The mob seized the woman and bound her to the tractor with ropes before ripping off her clothes and shaving her head in an apparent bid to humiliate her.

They had wrongly accused her of involvement in the disappearance of a child in Mithipur-Panagarh, a village in the Murshidabad district, last month.

The victim, who reportedly had severe learning difficulties, tried to protest her innocence as she was beaten to death. She was rushed to hospital after police arrived but died of her injuries.

Detectives launched a murder investigation and arrested several villagers, although none have yet been charged.

A police spokesman said: "A mob beat up the woman after a rumour spread that she was trying to lift children from the village.

"We have started investigating the murder case. We are trying to identify the people involved in the lynching as well as those who spread the rumour."