An Uttar Pradesh police official was caught on camera beating a man carrying a child in his arms with sticks in Kanpur Dehat’s Akbarpur area on Thursday. The policeman was an inspector at a local police station, NDTV reported.

The police later put out a video statement justifying the action of the police, saying that they only used “minimum force”.

According to the police, a group of people were spreading lawlessness in the area, shutting down the outpatients’ department and misbehaving with the patients at the district hospital in Akbarpur. The man who was beaten is reportedly the brother of the alleged instigator of these incidents, an employee of the district hospital.

The incident sparked outrage on social media, after which the police released another statement saying that “appropriate action will be taken against the guilty policemen”.