Over a period of more than a month women folk of Kashmir is witnessing braid chopping incidents that have traumatized their lives and have sparked mob violence and mass projects. Women are now hesitant to come out of their homes lest they should fall victim of it.
As with many events in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where a bloody insurgency has raged since 1989, the braid chopping has taken on political dimensions. Separatist leaders have claimed the attacks are an Indian government conspiracy to undermine the independence movement and “the dignity of our womenfolk”.
Armed militants say it is a strategy by intelligence agencies to inhibit their free movement. The fighters use sympathetic villages as hideouts and staging grounds for attacks – a much more difficult enterprise when villagers are paranoid of any outsiders.
Government officials in Kashmir have been ordered to keep quiet about the issue, but a senior psychiatrist at a public hospital in Srinagar said “unscientific” police investigations were complicating the cases and creating unnecessary fear.
“It has reached a level where nothing can be concluded,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Since there is a reward now, that means officially [police] are searching for someone. This entire episode needs multi-dimensional assessment, which includes law enforcement agencies, forensic and mental health experts.”
According to the state police, while there have been more than 100 alleged incidents of braid chopping, only half of these were reported to the police. The government, for its part, oscillates between “mass hysteria” and motivated attacks to explain the recent phenomenon.
State Education Minister Altaf Bukhari said on October 11 that in “90% of cases, it is more of a hysteria”. “Let me be very clear, it is a phobia. When there is no culprit, whom to arrest? There are few cases where braid has been chopped. It is not that true the way it is circulated,” the minister said at a college for women in Srinagar. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, meanwhile, took to social media: “Government will ensure steps are taken to find the motives behind these attacks,” she wrote on Twitter.
When incidents of braid chopping first broke out, the police had announced a reward of Rs 3 lakh, later doubled to Rs 6 lakh, for information on braid choppers. Now, it has directed its attention to alleged rumour mongers. Police officials say more than three dozen arrests have been made for rumour mongering across Kashmir and several more first information reports have been filed.
A senior police official pointed out that braid chopping incidents have occurred across north India but remain unsolved. The incidents stopped, he said, after people were made aware of psychological distress. “It stopped there because the civil society including doctors and psychologists voiced their opinions but here in Kashmir, the civil society won’t speak a word,” he said.
Civil society was too intimidated to speak up, the officer continued, and the police could not take a stand as it was “in the dock for its inability to solve a ‘mental crime’”. “No police can solve a crime which has not even happened,” he rued.
No suspects were identified and the cases did not stand up to thorough forensic examination, he said. “In right-handed individuals, the braid chopping conformed to their right-handedness, and the same with left-handed people. All these people were getting attention, going on TV, being quoted in newspapers. So we believe it was a mass hysteria, an attention-seeking phenomenon.”
He said the families of future victims should seek out doctors before going to the police. “In many of these cases people will be found to have psychological conflicts,” he said.
Popular anger culminated on Monday with protests across Kashmir, many led by women, that shut businesses and schools and were dispersed by police in riot gear using smoke shells. A five-year-old boy was seriously injured in the unrest.
The claims made by some alleged victims give few clues for police to pursue and are more akin to ghost stories than crime reports. One victim told that she had been cooking cheese in her home when she felt someone grab hold of her hair.
“I thought it was my son, but then I was dragged and I thought my son cannot do it,” she said. “I could only see that the person was wearing a black dress. I don’t know whether the person was man or woman.
“When I tried to scream, another person sprayed something on my face and I fell unconscious,” she said. “I gained consciousness at a hospital. For the next two days I had no idea what was happening around me. Even now I am very scared. I sit under a blanket and feel scared at every knock.”
A police official, Parvez Ahmad, said investigating the said victim’s allegations was challenging because she had a history of severe mental health problems, experiencing hallucinations even as she was being interviewed by officers.
Another alleged victim of 13 years, said she had been studying when she felt someone touch her hair. “I ignored it. Then I heard someone jump out the window and when I went to see, there was no one. When I returned to my place I saw my chopped braid there,” she said.
In Kulgam district, where 13 braid chopping incidents have been reported, the police superintendent Shridhar Patil said he was exploring several leads, including personal grudges involving victims, “love triangles” and psychological illness. The majority of the complainants in his district either had a history of mental illness or regularly visited faith healers, he added.
All these interpretations and investigations do not lead us to the fact whether this is the case of Mental Hysteria or otherwise. But the fact remains that people are experiencing the incidents across the state not one, two , there are hundreds of such incidents that occur every day followed by mass panic and mob violence. The mystery will remain a mystery till the truth comes to the fore.
