8 more held for bid to set deranged youth ablaze

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, October 22

Eight more persons were arrested on Sunday for trying to set ablaze a deranged youth in north Kashmir’s Sopore sub-district on Friday. He was assaulted after a mob termed him a braid-chopper. “A total of 20 persons have been arrested in this case and 10 to 12 more have been identified,” Sopore Superintendent of Police Harmeet Singh told The Tribune.

As the police launched a major crackdown against rumour-mongers and vigilantes involved in violence triggered by braid-chopping incidents, a senior mental health expert has said the cases might come to an end soon, if they are actually caused by hysteria.

He said, “If these cases are actually caused by the dissociative disorder or mass hysteria, these will possibly end within two weeks or so, if no external elements are involved.”

The expert said like in any other epidemic, the situation stabilises once the vulnerable people exhaust and non-vulnerable begin the containment. “It seems it is reaching a point where it is now facing the non-vulnerable, so if there are no external elements involved, at maximum it will last two more weeks,” the expert said on the condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the police crackdown, underway for the past several days, has led to the arrest of nearly 50 persons who were involved in mob attacks and spreading rumours about braid-chopping. Most of the arrests have been made in Baramulla and Srinagar districts.

Senior minister Naeem Akhter had last week expressed the administration’s doubt when he appealed for caution against the demonstration of “collective frenzied behaviour”. He had said it was unclear if braid-chopping was “real or hysterical, physical or psychological”.