Residents in Khagrol are too scared to venture out at night.
Ranjana Devi has been lying on her bed but unable to sleep. On Thursday night, the 45-year-old resident of Khagrol village, 40 kms from Agra city, returned home from her neighbours' and felt a knock on her head. She managed to raise an alarm before she fell unconscious. "I heard a loud scream and so I jumped over our wall and saw her lying collapsed on the ground. A bunch of hair lay next to her. We knew instantly, the braid snipper has arrived," recounted Sarvesh, Ranjana's neighbour.
Such is the fear among the residents in Khagrol that the villagers are too scared to venture out at night. Ranjana is not the only woman who found her hair being cut off under mysterious circumstances.
12-year-old Bhawna also witnessed the bizarre attack in which her braided hair was cut by "someone" at her home. "I came to the fridge to get milk but suddenly someone tackled me from behind and snipped my hair. I resisted but was pushed against the wall. Though I managed to run out of the house, I couldn't see anyone else leave. I don't know who or what it was," she told NDTV.
Bhawna's father along with other villagers have now decided to hang neem branches at the door to steer away evil spirits. "The evil spirit which chops hair braids is on the loose and we are very scared. Since the police are not registering our complaints, we have resorted to traditional methods to keep them away," said Virender Pratap, a village head.
A similar mysterious hair snipping incident was reported 40 kilometers away at Dhoki village where a 52-year-old woman was found unconscious with her braid lying next to her in the wee hours of the morning. Neighbours say they saw a shadow dressed in all white in the villaged. "We were upstairs and though we heard Vandana's screams we were too scared to come down," said her neighbour Shalini.
Meanwhile, the police has urged the villagers not to fall victim to such rumours, insisting that there cannot be any logical conclusion to this.