Security forces in Iran have been accused of clubbing a teenage schoolgirl to death and then ordering her family to say she’d had a heart attack.

Nineteen-year-old Sadaf Movahedi – an only child – was allegedly struck on the head by baton-wielding security police as she left her school in Tehran on 17th October.

She was buried in Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery two days later.

Security agents threatened her family into stating that she had died of a heart attack, two sources close to the family told anti-regime media.

One told how the agents had been lying in wait for Sadaf in an alleyway after she finished school that day.

They had identified her from footage of an earlier protest by her red hair, the source – a parent of a classmate of Sadaf – claimed.

Sadaf went home after the beating with severe head pain, but her family was said to be afraid to take her to hospital.

She died a few hours later, allegedly from internal bleeding. The source denied she had a heart condition.

The second source told local media that one of Sadaf’s close relatives works in a government institution.

The same source told how her friends and classmates had been forced to delete posts about the teenager online and warned against mentioning her again.

The protests that erupted in Iran on 16th September following the death of Mahsa Amini have so far claimed the lives of around 323 people and injured at least 1,160, according to independent estimates.