Iranian security forces have been accused of staging a sick suicide stunt to fake the death of a 37-year-old woman said to have been beaten to death at an anti-hijab protest.

Atefeh Noami’s body was found under a blanket on her apartment balcony in Karaj with a hose connected to a gas valve near her mouth, according to independent Iranian media.

The security forces claimed she had taken her own life and hastily organised her funeral with just a few female relatives present.

Now members of her family have claimed that she was killed by the security forces during demonstrations on 26th November.

Then, they claim, security police arranged her body and some props in her apartment to make it look like suicide.

Her brother Mohammed Amin Noami has reportedly claimed that his sister did not want to kill herself and that her suicide was staged.

Amin Noami – who lives in Austria – told independent news broadcaster Iranwire: “She liked people to be together and was very persistent in her social connections with others.

“Whenever people had problems, he helped them. We lost our mother and father at a young age, so my sister really liked helping the elderly. She did housework and shopping for the elderly and took care of them.”

There has reportedly been no medical report issued by the medical examiner at the time of writing.

Iran’s security forces have a track record of apparently inventing hard-to-believe causes of death for people believed to have died in protests.

One girl is supposed to have flung herself off a building, while another is said to have died from eating tinned fish that was past its sell-by date.

Iranian forces have been cracking down on waves of civil disorder following the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, from Saqqez, Kurdistan Province, who was on a visit to Tehran when she was arrested by morality police, accused of violating hijab rules on 13th September.

She was allegedly beaten while in custody and spent the following days in a coma in the hospital before succumbing in the ICU on 16th September.

The clinic where she was treated said in a now-deleted social media post that she had been admitted brain-dead.

Alleged medical scans of her skull leaked by hackers showed that she had suffered bone fractures, haemorrhages, and brain oedema.

Independent Iranian media have claimed that Mahsa’s medical records showing her history of heart disease were faked by the Iranian government.

Numbers differ regarding how many people have been killed since the protests began.

The ongoing protests in Iran have killed at least 419 people, including 51 children, and injured at least 1,160, according to independent estimates.

It is also understood that more than 17,500 people have been arrested so far.