Islamabad, Feb 6 (IANS) An 11-year-old Pakistani boy was hung upside down from the ceiling fan and brutally beaten with a cricket bat for delay in serving tea to the owner of a shop where he worked.

Muhammad Nasir, 11, was saved by passersby who heard his agonizing cries.

Nasir ‘was screaming when we took him down’, Express Tribune qouted an eyewitness as saying.

On Friday, shopowner Chaudhry Niaz asked Nasir to get him tea.

When Nasir got late, Rasool tied him up and thrashed him.

Said Liaqat, the eyewitness: ‘It was a dreadful sight. The boy was screaming to be forgiven but Rasool just kept hitting him until we stopped him.’

When people intervened, the beating stopped. But as soon as the crowd dispersed, Rasool resumed assaulting Nasir.

‘The second time he took burning tongs from the stove and began chasing after the boy,’ said another eyewitness.

Doctors said the boy had been severely beaten and had suffered a head injury.

Nasir’s distraught father Khuda Baksh said: ‘I want the man to be caught and made an example of.’