Professional Stoners

(Srinagar, India) Dozens of young men have recently come under Indian police scrutiny due to their activities as paid stoners, professional anti-government and anti-police hurlers. They are known to receive cash, food and other property to show up at demonstrations and protests with bags of rocks.



Professional Stoners
The stoners, with faces scarf-covered, rely upon assistants to hand them stones, one by one. Champion-bhai is a leader in one group of tossers.

He is one of an elite band of semi-professional demonstrators in Srinigar courted by supporters of a variety of causes and paid for their services in cash or food and clothing, but who are also increasingly coming under the scrutiny of police intelligence.

“Recently, in one Friday action, I threw more than 400 stones and injured half a dozen policemen,” Champion-bhai claimed. “Demonstrators were very happy and two rich-looking men taking part in the agitation gave me 1,200 rupees (Dh95). In the evening someone sent two kilograms of mutton, a pair of jeans and one leather jacket to my home.” [...]

“Pitch-Kaka, Raju-Rubber, Arshad-Googli, Nazir-Chauka, Manna-Catch, Chikna [and] Champion are some of the notorious professional stone-throwers … In most of the demonstrations those few dozen are regularly present and we believe they are being hired by demonstrating groups who pay them for their services,” an unidentified police source in Srinagar told the newspaper.

“We have prepared a list of those stone-throwers by names and they are under watch. Possibly we shall soon begin ‘surgical’ clampdowns on at least some of them.”

The professional stoners risk prison plus torture if caught.