(Adds comment, mob violence, details) PATNA, India, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Police in eastern India helped a mob beat a suspected thief in front of a television camera, officials said on Tuesday, with one policeman tying the victim to his motorbike and dragging him until he passed out. The mob accused Mohammed Aurangzeb of stealing a woman's gold chain on Monday in Bhagalpur district of Bihar state, one of India's most lawless regions. Television pictures showed men had tied the shirtless young man's hands behind his back, and were viciously kicking and punching him and pulling his hair as he writhed on the ground, soaked in sweat and mud, begging for mercy, his trousers unbuttoned. When the police turned up, one uniformed constable tied Aurangzeb's legs to the back of a police motorbike while another hit him with a cane. They dragged him along the road behind the bike on his stomach and chest. "He was dragged for some time and the police constable stopped his bike only when Aurangzeb lost consciousness," Afzal Amanullah, the state's home secretary, told a news conference on Tuesday in Patna, the state capital. "This was an inhuman act and an unfortunate incident of a policeman taking the law into his own hands," he added. The police force in India is seen by many as being a law unto itself, with some of its members quick to resort to corruption and brutality, especially when dealing with poor or low-caste people. Two policeman have been suspended, officials said. Aurangzeb has been arrested for robbery and taken to a prison hospital with serious internal injuries, bruising and cuts. Police say Aurangzeb is a small-time thief who has been caught stealing in the past. They said the policemen and mob who attacked Aurangzeb -- a Muslim -- was mostly made up of Hindus, but would not say if they believed religious bigotry fuelled the attack, or if it was just a case of the powerful beating the powerless. The Hindu and Muslim communities have a history of deadly rioting in the district. India's National Human Rights Commission, a government investigative body, has asked Bihar police to produce a report on the attack, and may send its own officers to investigate, a spokeswoman said. Later on Tuesday, another mob, mostly if not entirely made up of Muslims enraged by the treatment of Aurangzeb, surrounded the local police station and threw stones, police said. Police denied media reports that they had fired guns to frighten the mob away.
