KASHMIR Area women live in fear of bandits chopping off hair
SRINAGAR, India — Hundreds of young men — armed with knives, cricket bats and iron rods — patrol the nighttime 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 — most reportedly occurring inside people’s homes — are so strange that police initially suggested women were suffering from hallucinations, until the governmentrun 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 very strong, and like a commando almost snapped my neck” before escaping, leaving her hair behind.
Just days earlier, Bilal’s 16year-old niece 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 also 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 militarized and disputed Himalayan region, where many among the mostly Muslim population already feel traumatized after decades of conflict between separatist rebels and India soldiers.
Similar incidents of hair banditry were reported earlier this year elsewhere in India, including in the northern states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. But nowhere have the attacks sparked such panic and vigilantism as in Kashmir.
While Kashmiri Muslim women traditionally wear their hair long like women in other parts of India, most cover it with headscarves out of cultural modesty.
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.
Residents are also suspicious of the Indian authorities, and some have accused soldiers and police of staging the attacks or protecting those responsible.
With the mystery unsolved, many Kashmiris have stopped traveling outside their neighborhoods after dusk, dealing a blow to local businesses.