A disturbing video of three men assaulting a young man in Chhattisgarh's Dhamtari district has surfaced on social media, showing the victim being beaten with slippers, dragged by his hair, and forced to touch the feet of his attackers while pleading for them to stop. One accused has been arrested; police are searching for the rest.

The victim, 27-year-old Rupesh Sahu, who works at a private company, was attacked on Sunday by a group of men from a neighbouring village in Khartuli under Arjuni police station limits. The men, allegedly drunk at the time, first pulled Sahu up by his hair before launching into a sustained assault. According to police and villagers who viewed the video, the attackers spat on a slipper and struck Sahu repeatedly on the head and face with it, while also raining kicks and punches on him and hurling abuses.

The footage shows Sahu being forced to repeatedly say "sorry" and address one of the attackers as "baap" — father — in an act intended to humiliate him. At one point he is forced to bow and touch the men's feet. In a separate clip that has also gone viral, the accused can be seen slapping him and attempting to strike him with a belt. One bystander in the video appears to reach for what looks like a sharp weapon.

The motive behind the assault has not been established. The accused reportedly uploaded the video themselves to an Instagram story, which is what eventually brought the incident to wider attention and triggered outrage once it began circulating more broadly.

Angry villagers who saw the footage moved to track down those responsible and managed to catch one of the accused, whom they restrained until police arrived. Additional SP Shailendra Pandey confirmed that a case has been registered at Arjuni police station based on Sahu's complaint, and that one accused has been taken into custody while a search is underway for the remaining attackers. The investigation is ongoing.

In a separate and more severe incident, a labourer was beaten to death in Korba on Monday afternoon at a platform beneath a railway overbridge crossing. The victim, who was sleeping off intoxication at the spot, was struck on the head 30 to 35 times with a wooden stick by the accused, reportedly in retaliation for a beating earlier that morning.