HYDERABAD: At a time when activists are fighting against the banned Chinese manja in the city, the widespread use of the nylon thread nearly claimed the life of a man late on Tuesday.Ashok Gupta, 33, was fighting for his life after sustaining a deep cut on his throat after his neck got caught in a Chinese manja on way back home from work. Gupta was riding a scooter, when the dangling manja accidentally got tangled in his neck and threw him off the scooter. “I felt as if a sharp knife cut into my throat. It was unbearable,” Gupta was quoted as having said.Local residents saw him writhing in pain and immediately took him to a city hospital at 10pm, where doctors administered 20 temporary sutures to close the wound and started fluid resuscitation.“Although the cut was deep, it did not reach the trachea which might have turned fatal for him. His neck muscles were exposed and the trachea was visible and there was bleeding from the cutaneous blood vessels. The cut was almost two centimetres deep, resulting in blood loss,” said Dr Sateesh Kailasam, head of department, emergency medicine at Maxcure Hospitals, where he was treated.According to doctors, the injury could have worsened had it not been cleaned properly. They gave him some prophylactic antibiotics and Tetanus vaccine after which he was taken to the operation theatre for further investigation and suturing.Doctors suspect it was indeed a Chinese manja that caused the injury.“A mere thread cannot cause such an injury. We suspect it was indeed Chinese manja where nylon threads are coated with glass and metal and are rampantly sold in the market as they are cheap compared to cotton thread,” said Dr Kailasam.This year, ahead of Sankranti festival, Hyderabad police arrested eight people and seized nearly ?15 lakh worth of banned manja.The ban on Chinese manja was declared on January 13, 2016 under section 5 of Environment Protection Act, 1986. Also, as per Section 15 of the Act, any person found to be violating the rules is liable for imprisonment up to five years or fine up to ?1 lakh or both.Activists, however, say that enforcement of the law has remained poor.

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