Ahmedabad: With Uttarayan around the corner, the state has witnessed a crackdown on the sale of banned glass-coated kite strings, including the infamous Chinese manja. By Saturday morning, 150 cases had been registered across Gujarat, with Ahmedabad city accounting for 48 cases, Surat 58, and Vadodara 38.
The city police, acting on Friday’s directive prohibiting cotton thread coated with glass powder, intensified raids on sellers and manufacturers of manja, known to cause harm to humans and birds alike.
The officials said that 48 cases were registered between Dec 21 and Jan 10. Thirty-two of these cases were registered in areas like Maninagar, Isanpur, Vatva, Danilimda, Kagdapith and Narol.
Following Friday’s directive, the city police registered 17 cases. Additionally, raids were conducted at nine different locations across the city. The city police said that awareness is being created to ensure that people stop using glass-coated and even Chinese threads.
A 19-year-old was arrested in Kalol with 15 spools of Chinese thread. These spools were kept in Aditya Thakore’s house inside a field. In another raid, Kalol Rural police arrested Vir Mistry, 20, with 15 spools of Chinese thread.
While Ahmedabad police have been checking kite and string vendors over the past few days for Chinese lanterns and Chinese ‘manja’ (nylon kite string), they began searching shops for traditional cotton kite flying threads coated with glass powder from Friday evening.
In a media briefing on Saturday, the city police said that nearly 12,000 police officials, along with 12 sections of the State Reserve Police Force, would be on the streets to maintain law and order. The officials stated that 15 deputy commissioners of police, 19 assistant commissioners of police and 86 police inspectors would be in the city on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Meanwhile, in Vadodara, a dozen people were detained by teams from various police stations in the city by Saturday evening for making glass-coated kite strings. These arrests were made by Akota, Panigate, Navapura, Wadi, Raopura and Warasiya police. At least 11 cases were registered in this regard.
These arrests do not include those made for selling Chinese lanterns and threads.
Authorities are ramping up checks over the weekend and on Monday too, urging citizens to avoid using these hazardous threads.