On August 2, a footage was posted on the Internet and went viral on the social networks in which shopkeepers of a market in the Beruni district of Karakalpakstan caught a guy, suspected of theft and decided to take the law into their own hands.
The footage shows market shopkeepers tying the "thief" by the hands and hanging him to the entrance gates of the market.
The Ministry of Interior reported that it opened criminal case against the man who hung the alleged thief, and he is now facing arbitrariness charge, punishable with a fine of up to 50 times the minimum wage, up to 300 hours of compulsory public works, or correctional labor for up to 2 years.
Also investigation is being conducted against the victim of this vigilante act, on his alleged involvement in a theft.
Many examples of so-called vigilante videos were posted recently to the Internet from Uzbekistan - incidents in which self-appointed posses of citizens armed with smartphones, and sometimes weapons, attacked and humiliated suspects rather than report them to law enforcement for the authorities to judge.
