Thiruvananthapuram, Oct. 8: Two nomadic women from Tamil Nadu, one of them pregnant, were disrobed and thrashed by a mob in a Kerala town yesterday after a shopper raised an alarm saying her child’s gold anklet was missing.

The crowd, egged on by onlookers who kept saying that children were routine targets of female thieves from the neighbouring state, tore the clothes of the two women to see where they had hidden the anklet.

A police van was reportedly parked nearby, but it was more than half an hour later that the cops intervened. They took the assaulted women and the shopper to a police station, but let the complainant leave after failing to find the ornament. The victims were then taken to a nearby primary health centre.

Suresh, a doctor, however, said only one woman was brought to the health centre and she left soon after.

The police today arrested five persons — Shami, Thajudin, Rafi, Sanal and Jabbar — in connection with the assault and registered cases against 10 others.

Sources said the arrests may not have been possible so soon had someone not videotaped the assault.

As local channels telecast the brutal thrashing, chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan and home minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan vowed deterrent action. The arrests came soon after.

Inspector-general P. Vijayanand confirmed that three of those arrested were involved in the violence and he would probe whether local police were slow to act.

An assistant sub-inspector and a constable have already been suspended, sources said.

The incident in Malappuram district is the latest in a series of “instant justice” mobs have inflicted on alleged thieves. Last month, 10 people were chased down and battered to death in Vaishali, Bihar. A few days earlier, a mob had gouged out the eyes of three bike thieves in Newada, also in Bihar.

Sources said yesterday’s assault started after the shopper, who had just been to a jewellery store, raised the alarm. The youths at the counter then targeted the nomadic women who were apparently moving about in a “suspicious manner” in the shop’s vicinity.

Till late tonight, the women remained untraced despite the chief minister’s promise of medical help.

The state human rights commission has asked the district police chief to appear before it.