UP police grapples with mass hysteria caused by rumours and superstition 

Fear stalks hundreds of Uttar Pradesh villages where women claim that ghosts have been cutting off their choti (braid) while asleep forcing police to issue an appeal to people not to spread rumours.

People say a choti-chor (braid thief) gang is on the prowl in western Uttar Pradesh and is cutting of hair of women. They believe it to be a bad omen as hair could be used for black magic.

In an advisory issued by Uttar Pradesh ADG (law and order) Anand Kumar, district police has been instructed to set up village committees to counter rumours about prowling ghosts or witches cutting off women’s braids when they are asleep.

“The rumour started last week about someone cutting off hair of women and within a few days it has spread over 22 districts of National Capital Region (NCR) and western Uttar Pradesh. Now almost every day police is getting complaints from women about this unknown ghost. They come to the police station, point to their braids and claim someone cut off their hair,” Manish Rakesh, a police officer confirmed to NH on Friday.

He said the panic and the rumours have been confined to villages till now. Since women in rural areas are mostly illiterate, these rumours spread very fast, he argued.

Munni Devi in his complaint lodged with a police station in Agra said that on Tuesday night, she went to sleep as usual but when she woke up next morning, she found her chopped off braid neatly placed near the pillow. She said neither she nor her husband heard any sound at night.

Gayatri,19, lodged a similar complaint at Etawah, 250 km south-west of Lucknow.

The fear is slowly turning into anger. Two days back villagers lynched a 65 year old woman in Mutnai village in Agra suspecting her to be a witch who had chopped off women’s braids. Police say the woman was mentally unstable and her appearance triggered panic among the villagers. She continued pleading innocence but failed to convince the murderous villagers even after she gave her address. The mob paid no heed to her pleas and beat her to death.

“To avoid re-occurrence of such incident police has been asked to set up village level committee that will monitor complaints about braid theft,” the advisory issued by the police said.

In another incident that’s come to light from Sikri in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district, a mentally challenged man was on Sunday beaten up by locals who took him for the person involved in braid-chopping incident in the village the day before.

Kavita Srivastava, the President of the Rajasthan chapter of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), informed National Herald that Mukim strayed at 4 AM on Sunday when he was spotted by locals, who, on seeing that he was mumbling things to himself, started beating him up. Some members in the crowd, however, identified Mukim, and were also aware of his medical condition, thus intervening in time.

Srivastava said that Mukim had to be hospitalised after the beating. But his father refused to lodge an FIR, she added.

Dr Dinesh Abrol told National Herald that such unscientific thoughts are being promoted by political leaders. People become prone to accepting such illogical ideas when top religious and political leaders preach irrationality, he confided.

Dr Amit Sengupta of Delhi Science Forum said all superstitions have a social base and now they have a political base too. Politics of today not only supports but also promotes illogical thought processes. “I think the incidents of chopping off women’s braids reflect a kind of mass hysteria. There can be psycho analysis of victims also but the chances of rumour mongering machine being active are higher. Earlier, we have witnessed the same rumour mongering at a mass level when the statues of Ganesha had started drinking milk.

Doctors described the phenomenon of braid-chopping as mass hallucination. “There is no ghost and they do not cut woman’s braids. This is a mischief, nothing else,” said Dr Rakesh Gaur, psychiatrist at JN Medical College, Agra.

According to IHBAS director Nimesh Desai, it is too early to have an opinion, but one of the many possibilities could be factitious disorder, a condition where a person fabricates or exaggerates physical or psychological symptoms.

“Diagnosis or impressions like factitious disorder should be made very carefully.”

“But it becomes more complicated and delicate when my belief system or behaviour is rooted in something my community and/or my subculture believes,” Desai said, doubting the possibility of factitious disorder at a mass level.

“It is possible theoretically that "an individual starts believing in a fictional scenario, but mass hysteria in factitious disorder is very uncommon if not rare.”

This is not the first time such incidents have been reported. In 2001 people claimed to have spotted a monkey in Delhi that appeared only at night and attacked people. In 2003 a so-called face-scratcher created a scare when he allegedly went about scratching faces of women in eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh. It was in 1995 when people claimed to have witnessed idols of lord Ganesh drinking milk.

(with PTI inputs)