Police in Iran allegedly beat a 22-year-old university student to death at an anti-regime street protest.

Then, to add insult to injury, officials claimed he had fallen to his death from his home and staged an interview with an actor pretending to be his father.

Ali Araghi – a student at Tabriz Industrial Management University – is believed to have died following a savage beating at the hands of security agents.

The brutal attack allegedly took place at an anti-regime demonstration in Valiasr Park, Tabriz, on 16th November.

But officials in East Azerbaijan Province later claimed that Ali had actually fallen to his death from his fourth-floor flat in Baghmisheh District.

They said that paramedics had arrived on the scene and found he had no vital signs but had taken him to hospital anyway.

There, medics had performed CPR on him but were unsuccessful and were only able to confirm his death, they claimed.

However, foreign-based opposition media reported that Ali’s family denied he lived in Baghmisheh, saying he lived in a different part of the city.

They also said a man interviewed by government media was not, in fact, the young man’s father as claimed.

East Azerbaijan is home to large numbers of ethnic Azeris, who comprise Iran’s second-largest ethnic group. Ali was an ethnic Azeri.

Iranian minorities are believed by many human rights groups to disproportionately suffer from state repression.

The ongoing protests in Iran have so far claimed at least 342 lives, including 43 children, and injured at least 1,160, according to independent estimates.

Five protesters have been sentenced to death.