Two men suspected of raping and murdering a five-year-old girl in a remote north-east Indian state were dragged from a police station and clubbed to death by an enraged mob, police said on Tuesday.
The girl's disappearance from the district of Lohit in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, and the discovery of her badly disfigured body, sparked widespread anger.
The accused, both plantation workers from the neighbouring state of Assam, were being questioned by police when a hundreds-strong mob carrying weapons stormed the compound on Monday.
"The mob damaged the station and took away the accused before beating them to death with clubs, hammers and stones," Lohit police chief Issac Pertin said.
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Fifteen people, including several policemen, were injured. No arrests have been made yet in connection with the men's killings.
Police had charged the pair, aged 30 and 25, with raping and killing the girl, saying they confessed to the crime during interrogation.
The girl's body was found on a tea estate where the accused lived.
Conflict between ethnic tribal inhabitants of Arunachal Pradesh and migrant workers from nearby states sometimes boils over into skirmishes.
In 2015 a mob broke into a jail in the neighbouring state of Nagaland and murdered a migrant worker accused of raping a tribal woman.
