Mysterious hair attacks raise panic in Kashmir
Vigilantes patrolling the streets after bandits chop off women’s braids
SRINAGAR (India): Hundreds of young men – armed with knives, cricket bats and iron rods – patrol the night-time streets of India-controlled Kashmir these days, hoping their ad hoc vigilante groups will deter the mysterious bandits reportedly chopping off women’s long, woven hair.
In more than 100 cases confounding police over the past month, women said they were attacked by masked men who sliced off their braids.
The attacks are so strange that police initially suggested women were suffering from
hallucinations, until the gov
ernment- run Women’s Commission warned them against making dismissive comments.
The region’s top elected official, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, tweeted recently that the braid-chopping was an attempt “to create mass hysteria and undermine the dignity of the women in the state”.
Still, police have no suspects and no leads, and no clue about the motives for the attacks.
“We’re frightened,” said Tasleema Bilal, a 40-year-old woman whose hair was hacked off last week while she was in her home in Srinagar, the region’s main city.
She said she tried to remove the man’s mask but he was too strong and managed to escape, leaving her hair behind.
Just days earlier, Tasleema’s 16-year-old niece Kousain Ajaz had also been knocked out by a blow to the head with a brick, only to wake up later in a hospital to find her hair gone. Other women have said they were knocked unconscious with a mysterious chemical spray that authorities have yet to identify.
The mysterious braid thefts have spread fear and panic in the heavily militarised and disputed Himalayan region.
Separatist leaders, angry at the initial reactions by police, said the attacks were the “handiwork of Indian agencies” trying to cower Kashmir’s rebellious population, which is widely opposed to Indian rule.
Police Inspector-General Muneer Ahmed Khan said it was ludicrous to think authorities were involved.
“It’s important to first know the motive behind such acts rather than who the culprit is,” Muneer said.
“Once the motive is established, it would be easy for us to solve such cases.”
While health experts dismissed the idea that women were imagining the attacks, pending scientific verification, they warned that the braid banditry could push an already edgy population further to the brink.
A scholar who studied psychiatric issues in Kashmir said it was not hard to believe women’s bodies would be targeted in this way.
“Hair has historically symbolised sexuality and a certain excessive feminine energy, which is a direct threat, not just a target of militarised masculine forces,” said Saiba Varma of the University of California, San Diego.
With the mystery unsolved, many Kashmiris have stopped travelling outside their neighbourhoods after dusk, dealing a blow to local businesses.
Meanwhile, men take turns on night-time vigilante patrols, and some have beaten up so-called suspects only to find later that they were innocent, police said.
The hair-chopping attackers “are behaving like a typical Bollywood film villain who tries to harm female family members of the hero after failing to pin him down”, said Srinagar university student Basharat Ahmed.
“And through these (braid) choppers, the government is trying to convey to us that we can’t protect our women. But they’ll fail in this scheme, too, God willing.” — AP