Pellets continue to kill people

Despite Home Minister Rajnath Singh approving the use of chilli-based PAVA shells as an alternative, pellets continue to kill and maim people in the Valley.

On Saturday, a 23-year-old was killed when security forces fired pellets on protesters in Batengoo village of Anantnag.

Shakeela Begum of north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, was looking for her five-year-old son when the pellets pierced both her eyes on Friday.

“I moved just 100 feet from my home in Heevan village of Fatehgarh, Baramulla, when pellets pierced my eyes. When I moved out, there were no troops in the area. They were hiding behind some wall and I was the lone woman walking on that road,” she said at SMHS Hospital with her eyes covered by dark glasses.

Shakeela, who has pellet injuries on her shoulders and face, besides her eyes, said she ran towards her home when the pellets struck her.

“I came running screaming Faheem (her son) and ran back screaming Allah’s name,” she said.

Despite injuries, she is thankful that her son is safe. “What am I without my lone son,” the 35-year-old divorcee, who lives with her brother, said.

Doctors said Shakeela’s right eye is ‘relatively better’ than her left as she does not seem to have much of haemorrhage in it. “In her right eye, most pellets have hit the sclera (white part of eye) and spared the iris,” doctors at the Department of Ophthalmology said.

Another pellet victim in the hospital is 29-year-old Abdul Ahad Bhat. He was hit by pellets in his eyes and chest on September 7. A resident of Kralpora in frontier Kupwara district, Bhat is the lone bread-winner in a family of seven members.