Hit by pellets, 13-year-old battles for life in hospital

Two boys have become the latest victims of pellet firing by security forces in Kashmir.One of the victims, a 13-year-old, is fighting for his life at the SMHS hospital. Mir Arfat, a class 7 student, was hit in his heart, abdomen, chest, neck and eyes, while a few pellets struck him near his spinal cord, a senior doctor at the hospital said.

“We cannot say anything about his condition right now,” the doctor said. “We will monitor him for the next 12 hours and decide on undertaking a surgery to remove the pellets out of his body,” he said. Arfat is conscious.

“Look what they have done to my son,” said Arfat’s father Ghulam Nabi Mir, who held the young boy’s hand as he cried for help. 

Ghulam said his son and three other boys were out on a walk when authorities lifted the curfew in the area. “They had entered a park on the roadside when a police vehicle passing by fired a burst of pellets at them,” he said, adding there were no riots in the area.

In the same incident, seven-year-old Asif Rashid has been blinded in one eye. “Pellets entered his right eye and exited through the other side,” a doctor from the hospital’s ophthalmic department said. “His eye has been completely damaged.” Asif’s mother said her son had left home to buy some biscuits. “Is he a stone-pelter?” she asked. Though Asif’s eyeball is not damaged, doctors said there has been considerable damage to the tissue.