A mob beat two men to death and injured a third in the Bhalukpong area of Assam’s Sonitpur district in the early hours of May 22. Sonitpur Senior Superintendent of Police Barun Purkayastha said villagers attacked the three after accusing them of taking cattle. The victims came from Morigaon district, and the officer confirmed they belonged to a minority community. A rights-monitoring record identifies the two men as Muslim.
Police said the villagers chased a vehicle carrying three cattle and assaulted the men. That is the police account of what prompted the crowd; it is not a judicial finding that the men stole cattle. The two deaths and the injury are distinct from the unresolved theft accusation. The immediate attackers described by police were villagers, rather than an identified government unit or political organisation.
Police registered two separate cases: one concerning the alleged cattle theft and another concerning the fatal mob assault. In accounts published on May 23, Purkayastha said no one had yet been arrested in the killing case and that identifying attackers was difficult because the remote village had no useful CCTV footage. Those statements describe the investigation at that time, not its established final outcome in September.
The men’s Muslim identity makes the case relevant to the record of violence affecting Muslims, but the available police accounts do not establish that religion motivated this particular attack. Accountability depends on identifying the attackers, examining the alleged theft separately and following the homicide investigation. No later arrest, charge or court result was independently verified for this report.