Nine men believed to have been participants in a mob that dragged, beat, and killed a woman after she was accused of burning pages from the Quran have been arrested, The New York Times reports. The woman's parents said she had suffered from mental illness for most of her life.

The woman, whose name was Farkhunda, was reportedly between 27 and 32 years old. "Farkhunda had a mental malady, and we have been seeing many mullahs and doctors to seek a cure for her mental illness," her mother told television reporters.

On Thursday, Farkhunda visited the Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque on the Kabul River, where there is also a shrine honoring a Muslim warrior who died in the seventh century fighting Hindu warriors. The Times reports that Farkhunda—who, according to her mother, had not slept in several days—began berating visitors for inappropriately praying at the shrine.

Afterwards, according to Mohammad, she was seen standing over a metal fire-pit, and several women accused her of burning pages from the Quran. Witnesses told The Los Angeles Times that the crowd grew to more than 1,000 people within 30 to 40 minutes.

Police unsuccessfully attempted to intervene. Farkhunda was beaten to death and dragged behind a car to the nearby river, where her body was burned. Cellphone footage of the incident has been widely distributed, the Times reports, and many of the participants' faces are clearly visible.

According to the Times, there is no evidence that Farkhunda was even burning a Quran. "The burned papers were pieces of a Persian book," Daiul Haq Abid, deputy minister of the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs, told TOLOnews, and independent television channel.

Image via AP. Contact the author at brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.