BAREILLY: To deal with the rising apprehension caused by braid-chopping incidents, as many as 70 mosques in Bareilly held a special prayer to keep “braid-cutting monster” at bay, reported Times of India.
These bizarre happenings have left the villagers in panic mode. They are living under a shadow of fear, blaming godmen, ghosts, witches and “cat-like” creatures.
Therefore a special midnight prayers was held between 11.30pm and 1am on Tuesday night across 70 mosques of the Bareilly district to keep the “braid-chopping monster” away.
Clerics of Barelvi sect which organised the prayers said that it was a “Devi Aapda” (divine calamity). More than 10,000 pamphlets containing ‘salamati ki dua’ (prayer for well-being) were also distributed.
Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi, national general secretary of All India Tanzeem Ulama-e-Islam (AITUI), said, “As people of the district are frightened due to hair-chopping monster, we conducted special prayers for immediate relief.
“Apart from holding prayers at prominent mosques across the district, we distributed nearly 10,000 pamphlets in Bareilly to make people aware about a prayer which they should recite to ward off braid-chopping incidents.”
Over 50 incidents of women’s braids being mysteriously chopped off have been reported in the past one week from the district.
These incidents bring back memories of the ‘Monkey Man’ scare in 2001 in Delhi when there were reports of a strange monkey-like creature attacking people at night.