NEW DELHI, (DNA) – A Muslim man was hacked and burned to death in India’s western state of Rajasthan in a suspected hate crime.

The half-burned body of the victim was found by the police on Thursday morning on a street in Rajsamand, over 300km away from the state capital Jaipur.

A resident of Rajsamand has been charged with murder.

According to the police, the victim has been identified as 48-year-old Mohammed Afrazul, who was working as a labourer in the town.

A YouTube clip shows the accused leading the Muslim man to a secluded spot and attacking him with a weapon. The victim cries out for help until he falls silent.

The attacker, identified by the police as Shambhu Lal, then addresses the camera and delivers a warning against “love jihad”, which the Hindu far-right believes is a conspiracy by Muslim groups to lure Hindu women into marriages with Muslim men and to convert them to Islam.

“You jihadis, this is the fate that awaits you. Stop ‘love jihad’ in India, or else you will meet the fate of this man,” the attacker says in Hindi.

He then proceeds to douse the body with petrol and set it on fire.

“This is a brutal crime. Prima facie it does not look like this is done by a normal human being,” Rajasthan’s Director-General of Police, OP Galhotra said at a press conference in Jaipur on Wednesday.

“The probe by a special investigative team has made it possible for us to arrest the killer seen in the video,” he continued, adding that “The probe is in its initial stages.”

It is one of the worst crimes in the recent upsurge of attacks suffered by India’s Muslim and Hindu lower caste communities.

Harsh Mander, activist and former bureaucrat, says there is a “growing climate of hate” in India.

“We have a political leadership now in the country that has created an environment which is permissive of acting out hate speeches and hate actions. Lynching of this kind is a growing phenomenon in many parts of the country,” Mander told.