Mysterious braid-choppers who drug women stir mass panic in Kashmir

SRINAGAR, India-administered Kashmir — She raises a thick bamboo stick wrapped in red tape at one end, a homemade morning star with rusty long nails sticking out. Together with three other women from the Sheikh family, they wait for “the braid-chopper” at their house in Batamaloo, a neighbourhood in India-administered Kashmir’s (IAK) capital of Srinagar.

“The next time he comes,” 17-year-old Aaina Manzoor says brandishing the weapon, “I am going to smash his head with this.”

“And crack his skull in two,” her grandmother Fatima Begum adds. They all laugh at the idea of them attacking someone — Aaina, her 14-year-old sister, their 40-year-old mother Fehmeeda Akhtar and the 72-year-old grandmother. He should come and see, they say.

But beneath the laughter and the confidence, the fear in the house is palpable. 

Aaina hasn’t left the house since last week when two assailants lopped off her hair. 

But she knows even her home isn’t safe; that’s where the attack took place. Aaina sleeps with her parents now. The teenager is afraid of being alone. 

Even as she holds the DIY weapon, she becomes shifty at the mere mention of going to school again. Even the slightest noise from the neighbourhood startles her. 

The bogeyman 

“People say the braid-chopper comes again for the women whose hair he leaves partially intact. And I feel he will come for my hair again,” Aaina says. She looks pale, her eyes heavy with the use of sedatives and too much sleep.

It was nine in the morning on October 11, Aaina had changed into her school uniform and combed her hair when she says she was attacked by braid-choppers.

“I bent out of my bedroom window to pick up my school shoes but there was a woman and a young man waiting there,” she recalls. “And the woman sprayed something at my face from a small white can and then the man grabbed me by my hair. Then I don’t remember anything,” Aaina tells TRT World.

Fehmeeda says she heard her daughter’s scream and rushed into the room.

“I saw the man trying to jump out of the window. But I grabbed him by the collar and said you can kill me but I won’t let you go,” Fehmeeda adds. “Then he hit me with his elbow, throwing me across the room and he jumped over the wall. After all, a man is a man and a woman is a woman.”

Since then the grandmother walks around the house armed with a small cricket bat and Fehmeeda checks the bolts on the doors and windows on the hour, every hour. The younger sister worries about losing her hair to a similar attack.

Over the last two weeks, at least seven women reported that masked assailants used a spray to knock them out and then chopped off their hair — just in Batamaloo. 

But no one has been caught red-handed.

Fear, the ultimate weapon of war

The phenomenon first emerged in July and August 2017 in several northern states of India; more than 1,500 cases of braid chopping were reported. 

The first incident in Kashmir was reported on September 6 in the south. Since then, around 200 cases of such attacks on women have been reported across the disputed IAK, spreading fear — and paranoia — among Kashmiris.

Women gather in their neighbourhoods in groups of twos and threes, talking about the braid-choppers. Crackling announcements from mosques ask people to remain vigilant and come out on roads to spread the word if a suspected braid-chopper is spotted. 

Young men have formed vigilante groups to guard their neighbourhoods round-the-clock with axes, large knives and iron rods.

“We almost caught the braid-chopper last night. But using his special shoes fitted with springs, he jumped high into the air and landed on that edge there,” Mushtaq Sheikh, a young vigilante in Batamaloo, tells TRT World, pointing to the tin roof of a three-storey house.

“We know who these braid-choppers are. They are the Indian agencies and the police,” he says. “We have no enemies but them.”

In Indian-administered Kashmir, some see the police as a tool used by an occupying force to keep Kashmiris in check. 

The police officially announced a $9,000 award for actionable information about the braid-choppers. 

But behind closed doors, officials say there is no braid-chopper. They suspect the entire matter is more likely to be a product of mass “hysteria”.

“We have been investigating and we are quite certain women are cutting the hair themselves in a moment of hysteria,” a senior police official requesting his name be withheld, tells TRT World. 

“Hysteria” is not a clinically-defined mental illness. As a neurosis which only afflicts women, it was rejected by the medical and scientific community in the 1980s and replaced with more neurologically-linked mental health indicators. 

But it is still common parlance in the subcontinent; a word with connotations ranging from emotional distress to panic attacks and seizures. 

And so, those who do not see the “braid-chopper” as a viable tangible enemy, dismiss him as a manifestation of “hysteria”.

Experts say it could be a dissociative disorder, which the American Psychiatric Association says includes symptoms like "the experience of detachment or feeling as if one is outside one’s body, and loss of memory or amnesia." 

“It is impossible that no one has been caught red-handed so far,” the senior police official criticises the authorities for announcing the prize money when it was a clear case of “hysteria.”

People need to cooperate, for the police to achieve any breakthrough, Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir Munir Ahmad Khan says at a press conference. “The investigation can’t be effective because there is no cooperation, not from the victims, not from their families.” 

Kashmiris blame the police, the Indian intelligence agencies and the Indian Army for the attacks on women. The “braid-chopper” is part of the psy-ops, Kashmiris say, psychological warfare used against the restive population seeking independence from Indian rule. 

Real or an Indian spectre, the ingrained paranoia is symptomatic of the Kashmiris’ lack of trust in the government that rules them and in the institutions that are supposed to safeguard them. 

Left to fend for themselves amid a sense of helplessness, Kashmiris are attributing special powers to the braid-choppers, like spring-fitted shoes, the power of invisibility, special cameras, anaesthetic sprays and a team of Indian forces ready to extract the braid-choppers from a pinch.

As more instances of braid-cutting are reported, it becomes impossible to sift facts from rumour. The entire region is rife with compelling tales, triggering rage against the authorities.

Seven decades of perpetual control

Bilqees Jan, in her 40s, says she was attacked twice at her home within a span of a week, both times her hair lopped off. She says her 11-year-old daughter was also attacked.

“I was cooking and I saw a shadow approaching from behind. The moment I looked back, a veiled man sprayed something on me and I fell unconscious,” Bilqees tells TRT World.
“The neighbours resuscitated me and collected my hair. Then I was attacked again while combing my hair. And then my daughter too,” says Bilqees.

A group of Indian paramilitary personnel stand guard outside Bilqees’ home in Bonpora Batamaloo, but that does not instil much confidence in her.

“The Indian forces kill militants in the forests, they arrest stone throwers from their homes in the middle of the night; their intelligence agencies know everything that happens in every corner. But why can’t they arrest the braid-choppers? Because they are the braid-choppers,” she says confidently.

Bilqees also insists a spray knocked her unconscious. While Aaina’s attacker had a white can, Bilqees’ wielded a green one. 

Anesthesiologists, however, rule out a simple “knock-out” spray.  

“Administering anaesthesia is a very complicated procedure, more than people may realise. It is done under controlled conditions with a specific percentage of inhalation agent and it is done using proper machines,” Dr Khalid Feroz, an anesthesiologist tells TRT World.

“And if people are falling down after being knocked out unconscious, there must have been head injuries in several cases or at least other complications resulting from the unregulated use of anaesthesia.”

Aaina, though, is sure that the woman who sprayed her with “that thing that made me unconscious” wore the same khaki dress that policewomen in the region wear. 

The history of the highly-controlled region provides context to the people’s allegations against the Indian authorities. 

Since 1990 at least 75,000 people have been killed in Kashmir which remains one of the most militarised areas in the world with over half-a-million Indian soldiers. The 90s also saw sexual violence against women and the rape of Kashmiri women by Indian soldiers, as documented by rights groups.

Thousands of Kashmiris are behind bars. Around 8,000 to 10,000 have reportedly been subjected to enforced disappearances who Indian authorities said were in neighbouring Pakistan, signing up to become militants; however, bodies found dumped in unmarked graves in the IAK indicated another possibility.  

The Indian forces use live bullets, tear smoke shells and pellet guns on the pro-independence demonstrations. At least 600 young men and women have sustained damage to the eyes or been blinded after being shot by pellet guns in the last six years.

As a result, the people of IAK blame India whenever any disaster or tragedy befalls them.

“In their conscious and subconscious, the [Kashmiri] people know the only ghost haunting their lives is the Indian rule. They see it as the source of all the ills in their life,” a Kashmiri psychiatrist tells TRT World on condition of anonymity.

“Though I see a majority of the cases in this braid-cutting phenomenon as a result of intense trauma among people and a case of what we call dissociative disorder, I understand why it has gathered as yet another storm against the Indian rule,” the Kashmiri psychiatrist says.

“In the first six cases we were clear that it was dissociative and conversion disorder and the government knew the same, but they announced a reward for catching the braid-chopper and the chief minister said that she will arrest the braid-choppers,” the psychiatrist adds, “In fact, all the ministers are saying that now. So the doctors decided to remain quiet because we don’t know what game the government is playing, and now we are also unsure.”

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti says the government has constituted a high-level team and is doing its “best to reach to the root cause of the problem.”  So “the culprits are exposed and the truth is explained to the people,” Mufti addressed the media on October 2.  

Mob justice

In the absence of evidence, neighbours are beating up each other and vigilante mobs are on the hunt. 

A 70-year-old man was killed in southern Kashmir after his neighbour, suspecting him of being a braid-chopper, hit him on the head with a brick. Two tailors were beaten up in Srinagar while they were out to pick up some fabric from a customer. A crossdresser was beaten up by a mob. A young man circling his girlfriend’s home was mistaken for a braid-chopper and lynched by a group of people. In one incident, six backpackers were detained by a mob and had to be rescued.

“It shows how years of violence and oppression have led to a sense of vulnerability and fear among people,” the psychiatrist says.

The region’s resistance movement has called for protests in the wake of reports of attacks on women. The government responded by imposing curfews and shutting down schools and colleges and the internet — a common response.

Hair has been a symbol of feminine beauty and honour in South Asia for centuries. The spectre of the braid-chopper draws attention once again to the vulnerability women face in a region. 

Fear continues to grow in the region, breathing life into the braid-chopper, into a team of special Indian agents, into psy-ops, into ghosts, into a demon, into the oppressor.

“They can cut my hair,” Aaina’s grandmother says, pulling off her white headscarf. “What is left on my head anyway? But I am scared of this spray that makes you unconscious because who knows what they can do when you lose your senses.”