Two children, one man killed as glass-laced kite strings slit throats in Delhi

Washington Post ^ | 17 Aug 2016 | Max Bearak

[DUMBGRUNT]

The object is to make your kite dive at another in such a way that its string cuts the string of the other kite, causing it to fall. Then, usually, a second game ensues for the gaggle of children who have been watching the aerial battle. They scramble to follow the snipped kite as it falls, racing to be the one who can retrieve it for its owner...

Shops that sell kites began stocking glass-laced kite strings to make it easier to cut others' strings.

[buwaya]

Been around a LOOONG time.
We had these strings in Asia since before I was born.
Kite-fighting was a thing.

[HiTech RedNeck]

But somehow they managed to clean up their kite string afterwards didn’t they? Or they would have gotten what for at home. People were taught to care about their neighbors.

[entropy12]

This story sounds bogus to me. I grew up coating ground glass on kite strings. I did have several cuts on my fingers but they were never more than 1 mm deep. To slit someone's throat, the person had to be held down by force and several hundred yards long string pulled around his throat. Simply getting tangled won't cause cuts deeper than 1 mm.

On "Sakrant" day in January, my town had half a million kites in the sky, cutting off strings of other flying kites. It was the the most exciting day in life of us as teenagers. More exciting than Diwali, Christmas and New Years, combined.

[grey_whiskers]

Muslim extremist kites?

[Carriage Hill]

Never heard of this before.

[Carriage Hill]

Popeil’s Bass-O-Matic!

[Ray76]

[TigersEye]

That’s not what the article said.

[Mr. Douglas]

My bad. I’m guilty of responding to a headline and excerpt.

[TigersEye]

Guilty! ;-)

[Organic Panic]

Assault kites.

[ETL]

In other news, razor-edged frisbee decapitates man in park.

[DUMBGRUNT]

I can only guess, that in the past a short section of ‘homemade cutting string’ was used.
Now it is mass produced and weighs less, allowing for longer sections to be deployed?

[entropy12]

Typical string I used from age 10-18 was several hundred yards long, and very strong. It was very hard to break it by hand. To coat it with abrasive mixture of ground glass, wheat paste and liquid glue, I strung it around 2 telephone poles about 50 yards apart. One reel of new string would require me to wrap the string a dozen times or more around the 2 poles. Then I had to wait 3-4 hours until the coating was dry. After that it was reeled in on a large reel with a handle on each side. Usually my fingers would be cut at several knuckle joints handling the string. Yeah yeah teenagers do some crazy things.

[fireman15]

Different story from the lede story here maybe. This sounds like careless kite flyers who left pieces of this sharp string behind entangled in tree branches or wires over a roadway, and did not mention anybody actually being accused.

I didn't read far enough in the story. I got to the part in the Hindu times story I saw, “A case of negligence has been registered in both incidents and investigation has begun, police said.” I assumed that this meant that this was at least partially intentional. To me it seems somewhat unlikely that string embedded with glass would stay suspended at neck height across roadways in several different locations causing injuries. That seems like more of a freak accident type of situation and not something that all of a sudden causes multiple similar incidents. String embedded with glass has been around for hundreds of years. I remember reading about this sport when I was a kid and even how to make the string. All of a sudden we have many injuries and three fatalities in one day. Maybe a Chinese entrepreneur came out with a stronger sharper variety. But it still seems suspicious to me and possibly connected to social media.

[rlmorel]

One of my favorite sketches...

[ETL]

What's this I hear about flying kites in a deli??

There's is not enough room in a deli to fly a kite!

I'm not surprised someone got hurt!

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

No hubcaps?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvBrnfOAdBY

[buwaya]

No idea. As far as I know no-one ever got hurt with this (Manila, other provinces).

[DUMBGRUNT]

Indoor kite flying, no problem!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9trty88H2TU