[The News (Pak)] Marauding mobs in southern Bangladesh have lynched four people in recent days after rumours spread that some locals were kidnapping children for human sacrifice, police said on Wednesday. The police in the southeastern port city of Chittagong have launched a massive campaign to counter the misinformation and to restore calm, city police chief Abul Kashem told AFP.
"Rumours are swirling all over the city that kidnappers are hunting for human heads to sacrifice them for the new bridge," he said, adding that two women had been killed and two men rescued by police from angry mobs.
In Chittagong district, which surrounds the port city of five million people, two more men were killed, and eight seriously injured by a mob, said Faruk Ahmed, assistant police superintendent in the area.
Some rural Bangladeshis are deeply superstitious, believing that human heads must be sacrificed in order to make a bridge strong. A new bridge over a major river in Chittagong is set to open next month.
"We're on red alert and we ask people: please don't believe these rumours, and don't take the law into your own hands," Ahmed told AFP, adding that his force had increased patrols at markets and arrested 43 people over the killings.
City police chief Kashem said officers had begun using loudspeakers to warn people not to listen to rumours or believe in superstitions.
"We are also publishing advertisements in newspapers and we urge clerics to use their sermons to fight off this social ill," he said.
Killings over traditional rituals are reasonably common in rural Bangladesh. In March, a labourer was murdered by brick-field workers who burnt his head in a kiln in the belief this would improve the quality of their bricks.