In Ward No 9 at SMHS Hospital here, a middle-aged woman from north Kashmir’s Kupwara district lies motionless along with her 17-year-old son.
The mother-son duo received pellet injures on August 4 and were brought to Srinagar in an ambulance by some volunteers.
Naseema Begum, a housewife, shivers when asked about the fateful day. “It was a doomsday. My son had gone out when protests began. I got worried and left home searching for him when suddenly I sensed an electric shock-like current. Blood started oozing out of my body, followed by intense pain,” Naseema told DH.
“As some local boys were rescuing me, I learnt that my son, Rameez, too, was hit by pellets. I fell unconscious upon hearing that,” she said.
While Naseema received pellet injuries below the waist and is recovering, the condition of her son is still critical as he sustained injuries from head to toe. Rameez, according to the doctors, sustained pellet injuries in the cardiac region, stomach, lungs, liver and intestines.
Naseema’s only request to this correspondent was to refrain from clicking pictures of Rameez as she feared reprisal by the police after the situation improved in Kashmir. “Please don’t click any pictures as I don’t want my son to undergo further torture after he is discharged from here,” she pleaded.
Another family from south Kashmir’s Anantnag district, admitted in the hospital, met a similar fate. Adil Ahmad, a class VI student, looked good in his outfits and dark goggles. But drops of blood on his shirt had a story to narrate. While doctors said vision in his left eye was partly salvageable, his right eye was badly injured due to pellets.
His mother Hafeeza Begum is admitted in the emergency surgical ward of the hospital. Her body is pockmarked with pellets and clothes drenched with blood. Hafeeza is still in a shock, wailing. “Ahmad sought my permission before stepping out of the house like an obedient son. I gave him consent to go out,” she cried as her husband asked her to rest.
Hafeeza is also worried about her daughter, who the family sent home after preliminary treatment of pellet injuries. “She was injured and bleeding. She had several pellets in her arm. But someone had to stay home. I have another son there,” she says.
Nearly 400 civilians have been hit by pellets in the last one month of unrest in Kashmir resulting in severe injuries, including loss of vision.
A senior doctor at the SMHS Hospital said 64 people were operated upon for pellet injuries in one or both eyes on Friday alone.
Pellet guns were introduced as a “non-lethal” alternative after the 2010 Kashmir unrest, when 120 people died as stone-throwing mobs took to the streets. Global rights group Amnesty International has already asked the Jammu & Kashmir government to stop the use of pellet guns, which have claimed several lives and left hundreds blinded in the ongoing protests.
Last month, the high court pulled up the state government for the use of pellet guns on protesters.
The court direction came a day after Home Minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament that the government was planning to set up a panel to look for an alternative.
However, despite promises, over a hundred protesters have freshly sustained pellet injuries.
Published 07 August 2016, 19:34 IST