Three more people have been taken into custody in connection with lynching of two men in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district, taking the total number of arrested people to 19, even as search operations continue in the state.

Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Mukesh Agarwala is monitoring the situation on the ground and also the search operations being carried out by security forces, a police spokesperson said.

Besides the 19 in custody, 13 other people have been arrested for posting hate messages and objectionable posts on social media in different districts of the state.

Police have arrested people from Bishwanath Chariali, Nagaon, Sonitpur, Darrang, Dibrugarh and Kamrup (Metro) districts.

On Sunday, Director General of Police Kuladhar Saikia said the state police were closely monitoring social media with ADGP (Security) Harmeet Singh given the charge to keep strict vigil on rumours on social media.

The DGP had also appealed to the people not to get swayed by rumours on social media and immediately inform the police if they came across such posts.

On Friday, two men from Guwahati were lynched by unidentified people in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district on the suspicion that they were child lifters.

Nilotpal Das (29), a sound engineer based in Mumbai, and his friend Abhijeet Nath (30), a businessman, had gone to the picnic spot Kangthilangso in Karbi Anglong late Friday night to capture the sounds of nature, police said.

The incident took place in the backdrop of a rumour on social media that a group of ‘sopadhara’ (meaning child abductor or lifter in Assamese) were on the prowl in Nagaland’s Dimapur town and some of its adjoining areas in the district. Karbi Anglong shares a border with Nagaland on the east.

On their way back from the picnic spot, the duo was stopped by some villagers at Panjuri. They were pulled out of the car and mercilessly beaten to death suspicion of being child lifters.

Both Das and Nath, according to a video circulated on social media, pleaded that they were not child lifters, but were Assamese visiting Karbi Anglong district.

After the police reached the spot, the two seriously injured men were rushed to a hospital but they died on the way. Their bodies were cremated on Saturday.