Delhi: Operating out of one of many alleys in North East district’s Sonia Vihar, a mobile store near Green Day Public School at Pusta No 5 has found a way to sell the banned Chinese manjha from behind closed doors.
Teenagers and college students alike frolic about as they emerge from the shop with a roll or two of the manjha made of synthetic threads coated with glass. They are happy to have bagged the arsenal they will deploy in the next kite fight.
Selling at inflated rates, starting at Rs 750, the sellers secure a high margin with little effort. One of the buyers of the manjha said that he had bought two of them and had been getting more of his friends to buy from the ‘phone-seller’.
“There are no police officers here. Most of them have placed themselves in the market area full of kite sellers,” he said, on the condition of anonymity. Although Delhi has generally seen a gradual decrease in the number of Chinese manjha cases, the North East has emerged as an outlier.
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According to a senior police official, the district has recorded 14 arrests till August 6, with the seizure of 200 rolls of Chinese manjha. “Earlier in 2023, we had recorded eight arrests with the seizure of almost 100 rolls. Instances have been increasing of late,” he said. In 2023, a majority of these cases were seen in other districts, such as North and Outer Delhi.
However, in 2024, the business of Chinese manjha has gone down significantly in these areas. Police officials credit the previous year’s crackdown and significantly more police deployment in the Chinese manjha hotspots for the success this year.
Unfortunately, business continues as usual in the North East district owing to its close proximity with the bordering state of Uttar Pradesh where there is no stringent enforcement on the sale of the deadly thread. The thread is manufactured in UP’s Firozabad, Bareilly, Meerut, Noida, and Loni.
Furthermore, since the North East district borders the Loni district, much of the manjhas are smuggled into Delhi through that district.
“Almost everyone who wants plastic threads or Chinese manjha go to Loni or some other place in UP to get their fix. Some just choose not to buy the manjha from Delhi,” said a kite seller at Sonia Vihar.
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According to a senior police officer, most of the seizures this year were from areas adjoining the bank of the Yamuna river.
“Sonia Vihar, Usmanpur, and other places along the Yamuna are areas where we seized the Chinese manjha from. Those in the trade use the river sometimes as well to pass into UP,” he said. On the brighter side, Chinese manjha has all but left the market in Seelampur’s Chand Mohalla kite market falling under North East police district.
