Updated 14:44, 22 Sep 2015
By Sam Webb
One man was forced to eat raw chili, another was forced to stand on an anthill, and a woman was undressed and forced to walk along a busy street with a sign around her neck saying: “I’m a thief”
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Video loading Vigilantes in Peru have been doling out rough justice to criminals and then posting pictures of the savage - and elaborate - punishments online.
One man was forced to eat raw chili, another was forced to stand on an anthill, and a woman was undressed and forced to walk along a busy street with a sign around her neck saying: “I’m a thief”.
But most of the pictures, posted on a Facebook page called "Chapa tu choro", or "Catch your thief”, simply show criminals getting savage beatings from their victims or bystanders.
The page was set up by Cecilia Rodriguez, whose neighbour found a burglar in her house in Huancayo.
Cecilia rushed to her aid with other locals and held the criminal until the police arrived and took him away.
Read more: Thief snatches woman's mobile phone - but gets a shock when she fights back
Savage: An example of vigilante justice in Peru She was angry to discover the man was later freed.
She said: "From that day onwards, we decided to spread the message in the community - that next time we catch a criminal, we won't call the police but we will punish them ourselves.”
Now more than a hundred pages with savage titles like “Catch your thief and leave him paralysed", "cut off his hands" and "castrate him” have popped up.
The videos are sickening. Victims are often left in pools of blood or severely disfigured.
Viral: The videos and pictures have become wildly popular on social media And even more worryingly an innocent man who was mistakenly accused of robbing a lorry in the northern district of Cajamarca was seconds away from being lynched.
It later emerged he was in fact simply a neighbour who had gone out to see what had happened.
Even Ms Rodriguez is concerned about the movement.
She said: "I didn't imagine the campaign would catch on the way it did.
"I do accept that it has got out of control and that some are taking the violence too far, which I'm not justifying but I do understand.
"We are living in a failing state, which is not fulfilling its duty of giving us all security.”
Jose Luis Perez Guadalupe, Peru's interior minister, admits policing in the nation needs to improve, but does praise citizen’s arrests.
He told the BBC: "Catch your thief yes, but hand him or her over to the police. Don't take justice into your own hands."
