- Monday, April 28, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
In dreadful incidents, six people, including three children, were killed after their throats were slit by ‘manja’ or glass-coated kite strings during an annual kite-flying festival held in India recently.
Several people unfurled their kites towards the sky from their house rooftops at the Uttarayan festival in the western Indian state of Gujarat over the weekend when the incidents happened.
The victims, who had the razor-sharp strings getting entangled around their necks, bled to death, official sources told the Press Trust of India.
Besides, at least 176 people were injured by cuts or falls.
In India, it is a practice to coat kite strings with powdered glass in order to slash opponents’ cords in the air as kite-flying could see intense competition at times. The potentially dangerous practice was banned in 2016 but yet the rules are often violated.
Among the minors killed in the incidents was a two-year-old girl who was riding a scooter with her father, PTI reported citing an official from Bortalav police station in the state as saying.
Another minor victim, aged three, was walking home with her mother in Visnagar town on Saturday (14) when a string slashed her throat. She was rushed to hospital but the doctors declared her dead on arrival, a local police officer said.
A seven-year-old boy named Rishabh Verma, who was also riding a two-wheeler with his parents in Rajkot, was also struck, the police said.
Similar incidents were reported in Vadodara, Kutch and Gandhinagar districts, where three men were killed after getting struck by the sharp strings, police added.
Nikunj Sharma, a campaigner for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals India, told The Guardian the use of ‘manja’, the nylon string used to fly kites instead of cotton, could cause severe injuries.
“Unlike cotton strings these are non-biodegradable, don’t break easily and continue to cause injuries months after the festival,” Sharma was quoted as saying.
While the police in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city, has been running a campaign warning against using the coated strings while flying kites, it has not brought much changes and now, activists have accused the government of failing to enforce the ban and demanded that it should compensate the victims.
Injuries caused by the ‘manja’ are rampant in various parts of the country, even in times when there is no festival as the deadly strings, thrown carelessly around, lead to fatal consequences.
