At least 30 people have lost both their eyes due to pellet injuries during the last 55 days of unrest in Kashmir.
On Wednesday, Mir Nasir, a Class 10 student from north Kashmir’s Pattan area, was admitted as the 30th victim at SMHS Hospital in Srinagar with both eyes hit by pellets. Nasir was injured on August 29 and for two days he was admitted at SKIMS Medical College & Hospital where he was given preliminary treatment.
Doctors at SMHS Hospital said both his eyes had vitreous haemorrhage, a condition where blood leaks into clear fluid filling the eye. “In addition, he has retinal detachment in the right eye,” they added.
Closing his blood-shot eyes with his hand alternatively, Nasir says it was his bad luck due to which he got injured. Apart from his eyes, not a single pellet wound is visible on his face.
Nasir is the eldest child of a farmer who has two more children, students of Class IX and Class V.
His two cousins, Ashfaq Ahmed and Tahir Ahmed, who attend to him at the hospital say that pellets were fired indiscriminately in Kalseri village when locals began to assemble to protest against the arrest of two youth.
“Nasir had heard announcement by the local masjid which asked people to assemble to condemn the spree of arrests and night raids by forces,” they say. “As soon as he opened the gate of his lawn, he was fired upon.”
Nasir is one among the 684 victims whose eyes have been injured by pellets and who have been admitted at one of the two Srinagar hospitals where eye injury victims are being provided treatment.
As per the hospital records, 66 people with pellet injuries had been admitted at SMHS Hospital since the morning of Wednesday till Thursday afternoon. Of these, 20 victims had eye injuries.
