Cow thief has acid INJECTED into his eye by villagers... five years after blinding his other one for similar crimes Mohammad Shahid was chased by mob after being caught stealing They beat him before using a syringe to inject liquid into his eyeball The known thief had already lost sight in one eye after identical incident By Aaron Sharp A man has been left blind after an angry mob of villagers caught him stealing a cow and injected acid into his eyeball as punishment. The known animal thief is now completely without sight after a his other eye was injured in an identical incident five years ago. The incident took place at a remote village in the north-east Indian state of Bihar last week. Rural: The north-eastern state of Bihar, above, in India has seen these types of vigilante attacks among its rural villagers before. Police are now members of the community for inflicting inhumane treatment According to local reports, Mohammad Shahid, 46 from Balchanda-Haripur village in the largely Muslim Araria district, broke into the cowshed of another villager Gosai Mandal. He untied the animal and was fleeing the scene when the house owner woke up and raised an alarm. After being woke by the disturbance, local villagers chased Shahid and found him with the cow nearby. It is alleged the crowd beat him while a syringe full of acid was fetched and injected it into his right eyeball. After the attack, he was handed over to the local police who admitted him to a local government hospital for treatment. Local police inspector Vivekanand Singh said his officers are now investigating the villagers who are accused of 'inflicting inhumane treatment'. Speaking of the victim, Singh added: 'For similar charges, he was sent to jail in the past but he did not quit his old habit even after coming out of jail' Symbolic: Cows are regarded sacred by Hindus, who make up about 80 percent of India's 960 million people, because they represent motherhood The incident is a reminder of the 1980 attacks in Bhagalpur when the police had blinded as many as 31 prisoners who were convicted or in the process of being tried by pouring acid into their eyes. The incident made criminal jurisprudence history by becoming the first in which the Supreme Court had ordered compensation for violation of basic human rights. The Bihar cow-thief is in a local government hospital for treatment but doctors say the chances of recovery of his vision are remote.