The Railway Protection Force (RPF) is probing how women’s hair worth ₹50 lakh, collected from villages in Madhya Pradesh, went missing from a train that was taking it to Howrah from Indore, police said.
The hair parcels are processed in West Bengal’s Midnapore and made into wigs and hair extensions before being exported to China, Bangladesh. They are also used for hair transplant outside India.
The quantity of stolen hair, naturally lost by women, is said to be ten quintals, and it was collected in a year from women in villages of Madhya Pradesh but went missing from Shipra Express on Tuesday, a railway police official said.
“This is quite unusual that hairs have been stolen because theft of any product is rare in Railways. We are investigating the matter as the parcel was loaded safely from Indore and it is hard to locate where it was unloaded. We have also informed the Howrah parcel officer to check with railway officials present in the train,” Indore railways public relation officer Khemraj Meena said.
The agents who collect hairs from rural areas to sell it to businessmen in West Bengal’s Midnapore for further processing and manufacturing of wigs and hair extensions, said they will go bankrupt if the parcels were not found.
According to these agents, the hair collection business is worth ₹one crore annually and hair collection agents in villages earn up to ₹1000 for a kilogram of hair depending on its length as longer hair fetches better price with women earning ₹200 for 100 gm of their hair.
Hair collection agent Sunil Ashok Ghumarkar said, “It took one year for me to collect 10 quintals of hairs with the help of some daily wagers from different villages of MP but I have lost it in the train.”
He added that the collection of hairs was not an easy task as it can’t be collected from salons. “We have to collect the hairs of women only and it must be minimum 8 inches in length. We wash it and segregate it according to size which goes up to 14 inches. We make separate packets according to size before supplying it to businessmen in Midnapore.”
The hairs are made into wigs and hair extensions before the finished product is exported, said Ajeet Dehra, a Midnapore based businessman.
“Due to changes in lifestyle and hair fall problem, the demand for hair extensions and wigs has increased by 20% in the past five years. We use 10 to 20% wigs and hair extensions for the local market and the rest is supplied to China and Bangladesh,” he added.
