MEXICAN police tortured those they rounded up during an investigation into the disappearance of 43 students and then covered up the torture, the United Nations alleges in a report published yesterday.

The UN human rights office said that it had “solid grounds” to conclude that at least 34 suspects were tortured as cops probed the kidnapping of 43 trainee teachers from Ayotzinapa in 2014.

It is suspected that the 43 were stopped by police and possibly the army, handed to a criminal gang and then murdered.

The UN report says investigators discovered “an almost uniform modus operandi” regarding how people were arbitrarily detained and tortured to extract confessions, while being kept from prosecutors for long periods of time.

Police gave “implausible and self-contradictory” reasons for detainees’ injuries.

All of the documented abuses took place after the federal government took over the case from local police, who were most clearly implicated in the original disappearance.

“The findings of the report point to a pattern of committing, tolerating and covering up torture in the investigation of the Ayotzinapa case,” said UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.