The Tripura police have arrested two more people in connection with the lynching of a man hired by the state government to spread awareness against rumour-mongering, PTI reported on Friday. Nine people have been arrested so far in the case, Inspector General KV Sreejesh said.

Hiren Tripura was arrested from the student hostel of a college in the Belonia sub-division of South Tripura district on Friday morning. The other accused, Sunil Mohan, was arrested from the district’s Sabroom town on Thursday.

On June 28, a mob lynched Sukanta Chakraborty, a member of a team deployed by the state information and culture affairs department to campaign against rumour-mongering, at Kalachhara in South Tripura. They suspected him to be a child lifter.

“We have got the video footage of the killing of Sukanta Chakraborty,” Sreejesh said. “We have found from the footage that all the accused were involved in the killing.”

The government on Wednesday suspended an assistant sub-inspector of police, a constable, and two Tripura State Rifles personnel for alleged lapses on their part that led to the lynching.

A spate of mob lynchings has claimed 22 lives in Maharashtra, Tripura, Assam, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Karnataka since March. The mobs seem to have been influenced by widely shared WhatsApp videos and messages asking people to beware of child kidnappers. The victims in most cases were people on the margins of society.