A Muslim boy was arrested in Assam’s Cachar district on Friday, hours after he was beaten up by a mob of Hindu youngsters for talking to a female friend. The mob accused him of “love jihad”.

“Love jihad” is a Hindutva conspiracy theory that Muslim men lure Hindu women into romantic relationships in order to convert them to Islam. The Union home ministry has told Parliament that Indian law has no provision defining such a term.

The incident took place near a higher secondary school at Narsingpur under the district’s Sonai police station area, where Ali Ahmed had gone to meet his friend on Independence Day.

At about 8 am, when Ali and the girl were talking to each other near the school, a group of boys from the Hindu community confronted him and asked his name.

“They asked my name and when I said Ali Ahmed, they started to beat me,” Ali, a Class 12 student, told reporters after the police took him away from the location. “There were 15-20 people. I don’t know them. Many more came later.”

The police said that the two teenagers were classmates and studied in the same school till Class 10.

The videos of the incident have gone viral online. In a video viewed by Scroll, Ali is seen shirtless and tied to a pole. Another video shows Ali, his hands tied, being pulled along by a rope and paraded in front of a crowd.

He appeared to be bleeding from the nose and mouth in the video. The girl was also seen crying.

Ali was seen pleading for help, saying that “there was no love relationship with her”.

The mob also assaulted the girl. As a woman pulled the girl’s hair, a group of men could be heard shouting in the background and asking her to show her face.

Ali’s family filed a complaint but no arrests were made in connection with the assault. However, he was arrested based on a complaint filed by the girl’s family.

“The boy was arrested under the POCSO [Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act] charges on the basis of the girl’s statement,” Cachar Superintendent of Police Numal Mahatta told Scroll.

Another official at the Sonai police station said that the boy had sent an “obscene” video to the girl on messaging platform WhatsApp and that he had initially introduced himself by a “different” non-Muslim name.

“The girl denied that they were in a relationship but [said that] they were classmates and studied in the same school till [Class] 10,” the police official said. “He was arrested mainly under POCSO charges.”

One minor person has been questioned in connection with the boy’s assault, the police said.

Rahim Uddin Barbhuyan, Ali’s uncle, alleged that while initially it was the mob that started beating his nephew, the matter escalated after the intervention of Hindutva group Bajrang Dal.

“Ali was arrested under the pressure from Bajrang Dal,” Barbhuyan told Scroll. “Despite my nephew being badly thrashed and there being video evidence, the police have not arrested anyone. This is outright injustice and discrimination.”

The incident came weeks after Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on August 4 that Assam will soon introduce a law providing for life imprisonment in cases of “love jihad”.