After being inducted as the non-lethal crowd-controller at the peak of 2010 mayhem, pellet guns started scripting a new age misery that is now a global shock. It took Kashmir six years to understand that the hunter guns used in the Kashmir Game Reserve for last 200 years have barely changed the targets, reports Shams Irfan

CT Scan image of a pellet injured patient. Pic courtsey: Kashmir Dispatch
CT Scan image of a pellet injured patient.
Pic courtsey: Kashmir Dispatch

Eight days after Kashmir’s new age “hero” fell in Kokernag, 15-year-old Umair Ganie insisted to accompany his ailing mother to a Sopore hospital. But despite his mother’s disapproval in face of tense town, the youngster stood adamant.

As the mother-son duo stepped out, a disturbing silence enforced on deserted alleys frightened young Umair. “He held my hand tightly,” said Rafiqua, 35, the mother. “I could feel him shivering.” But he didn’t express, fearing she might send him home and go alone.

The small alley, housing Rafiqua’s modest two room house, opens into a wider main road, connecting Gousiabad locality with Sopore town. “The moment we alighted on the main road, CRPF and STF personnel standing near an armoured vehicle turned their guns at us,” said Rafiqua. “Without a word, they fired pellets.” With boom, the duo fainted on the road.

The next thing Rafiqua remembers was her son Umair hitting the macadamized road, head first. “He let out a loud cry before collapsing,” the distraught mother said.

An eighth grader at a government school, Umair was bored by around fifty pellets on his face, head, abdomen, legs and arms. With no one visible on terror-filled roads, the mother carried her maimed son on her shoulders and ran towards the hospital, still more than 1 km away. She just kept running without looking back fearing firing.

Drenched in sweat, huffing heavily and about to faint, the frantic Rafiqua saw a lone biker coming her way after covering half the distance. “He proved angelic,” said Rafiqua, regretting that she couldn’t thank him. “He stopped immediately and gave us a ride to the hospital.” Without losing time, Umair was referred to Srinagar’s SMHS hospital.

But reaching Srinagar was not easy given the repeated attacks on ambulances by CRPF and police. “We were stopped and harassed at several place by forces,” she said. “Twice I had to plead with them to let us pass.”

As the bumpy ride finally ended at SMHS gates, doctors were shocked to see myriad pellets inside Umair’s tiny body. “The worst affected area was his face and head,” said Rafiqua, who was sitting near her son’s feet at Ward No 7 of SMHS hospital — where doctors even after doing one surgery are unsure of restoring vision in Umair’s damaged left eye.

And what about pellets in his head, legs and abdomen, asked Rafiqua impatiently. “Let him heal first,” says the doctor.

Resting his head on a reclined hospital bed, Umair, a star batsman of his Mohallah cricket team, pleads every passerby to help him get rid of the IV line inserted in his left arm. “Bhayah (Brother), please find a nurse and tell her to take this out. I can’t bear it. Please!” he asks this reporter with tearful eyes.

Rafiqua looks equally exhausted and in pain. “I haven’t seen my kids (elder son and younger daughter) since July 16,” she says. Her husband, a labourer by professional, stays at home to look after the kids. “He visits on alternate days.”

The sudden commotion inside the otherwise quiet Ward No 7 makes Umair forget his pain and the IV line for a while. The doctors on 24×7 duty are calling it a war-like situation. But the “war” they are tackling is different. It is about pellets —the Kashmir’s “new age tormentor” already blinding hundreds and sending even more packing to different hospitals across north India. And the rush seems mounting amid besieged Kashmir.

Among already admitted pellet-hit is Rainawari’s Danish Ahmad Jhat, surrounded by around two-dozen friends and well-wishers. This 24-year-old youth from Kalwal Mohallah Rainawari, Srinagar was lately shifted to Ward 7 from ICU.

Ghulam Mohidin Bhat, 24, has over hundred pellets in his body.
Ghulam Mohidin Bhat, 24, has over hundred pellets in his body.

Working with a pharmaceutical company as its marketing agent, Danish was hit on face and skull with pellets from a close range on July 17, when he was sitting at Rainawari chowk with his friends. “There was no curfew as such that day,” says Danish’s cousin who refused to be named.

At around 7 pm, when people were sitting outside shop-fronts, around 6 to 7 CRPF and STF vehicles came. “The one (vehicle) in the front was from our local police station,” recalls Danish’s cousin. “Then without a word or warning, one of the STF men took out a pellet gun and fired in our direction. It hit Danish in the face with full impact.”

At SMHS, the same day Danish was operated. “We had to remove his left eye. It was beyond repair,” says a doctor attending him. “His right eye is 80 percent damaged with little hope of recovery.”

With his left eye covered in layers of bandages, Danish looks blankly into the white ceiling with his other eye. “He is just gazing,” says his cousin. “He cannot see a thing.” Danish’s father, a labourer by profession, who worked tirelessly to raise a family of seven (three sons and two daughters) is now looking at his son’s dim future.

“Danish worked hard to ease his father’s burden,” continues his cousin. “And like his brothers, he was doing just fine.”

Sitting next to her brother, Danish’s sister is trying hard not to cry as her cousin narrates the events of July 17: “His life is never going to be same. He had so much planned. He had so many dreams.”

The rampant usage of pellets in Kashmir has already ended myriad dreams. Amid the mounting pellet assaults, even the Indian home minister calls for its immediate review in parliament. But on ground, the state managers – be it police or paramilitary force, are asserting they have no alternatives to pellet guns. Amid this wordplay, Kashmir hospitals are busy treating pellet-hit.

Unaware of what is happening outside the hospital, in newsrooms, on social media platforms, inside Indian Parliament, and in debates and discussions, these pellet victims have little doubt about its lethality.

“How does it matter whether it was a small tin pellet or a big lead one,” asks a doctor who has worked 36 hours at stretch since July 9, as pellet injuries started pouring in from across Kashmir at SMHS hospital Srinagar. “Look at their bloodied bodies and disfigured faces. Does it look non-lethal to you?” he asks angrily.

On the other end of the same ward, Suhail Ahmad Lone, 16, who has just finished his Class 10 exams, was sitting on the bed, clutching a white pillow to his abdomen, his bandaged head buried in his chest.

On July 12, after offering prayers in absentia for Burhan Wani at Eidghah, Baramullah, Suhail and his friends were returning home when they came across a CRPF party.

“They were at the bridge that connects our village (Baden) with Baramullah town,” says Suhail without raising his head. “As we were not raising any slogans or throwing any stones, we decided to cross it quietly.”

But as they reached mid-way on the bridge, within the 40 meter range of the hunter gun, a CRPF personal, who was hiding behind the armoured vehicle, took aim at Suhail and fired a single but deadly shot. Instinctively, Suhail raised his right arm to protect his face. “But I was not fast enough,” says Suhail in a regretful tone. “It (pellets) hit me in the left eye and right elbow,” said Suhail.

As he collapsed, Suhail’s friends, shielding their faces, dragged him out of the pellet guns range, and carried him away till they found a car. “I was still conscious. Though I couldn’t talk but I remember everything,” Suhail says.

Two kilometre drive to the hospital through deserted roads was both challenging and haunting for Suhail’s friends. “I could sense tension inside the car,” he recalls.

The tension was probably outcome of numerous reported incidents, where injured and their attendants, were dragged out of ambulances and beaten by CRPF.

Pellet-injuredHowever, luck favoured Suhail and his friends as they managed to reach the hospital safely! Given the severity of his wounds, he was immediately referred to Srinagar. “We reached here at 10:30 pm,” says his mother looking helpless as her son moans in pain.

Unlike other pellet injury patients, Suhail was not operated immediately. Instead doctors washed his wounds, gave him first aid and shifted him to this ward. The first surgery was done after eight days. “Doctors are not saying anything. We are not sure if his eyes are okay or not,” his mother says.

But not all are kept in the dark. There are a few like Ghulam Mohidin Bhat, 24, a drive, who face their fate with smile and resilience. Admitted in SMHS hospital since July 10, Bhat has over hundred pellets in his body. Like war medals, he displays his hairy chest, exposing small black dots that remind him of the guy who aimed and shot at him from point blank. “The other guy who was with me at that time was hit by a tear-smoke shell. He is in Barzulla hospital,” he tells visitors.

A resident of Sangam in south Kashmir’s Islamabad district, Bhat’s journey was cut shot near Panzgham railway station by a joint patrol party of CRPF and STF. “I was taken to Panzgham health centre first. But nobody was there. Then people rushed me to Bijbehara hospital,” Bhat says.

After looking at his condition, doctors referred him to SMHS hospital. While leaving Bijbehara, the ambulance driver gave a piece of useful advice to Bhat: if stopped by CRPF and police, tell them you met an accident. The advice came handy when their ambulance was stopped at Awantipora, Pampore and Pantha Chowk. “It was quite messy. I had blood all over my body, so they didn’t enquire much and let me go,” says Bhat.

At SMHS hospital, Bhat underwent an emergency surgery. Almost a week later, Bhat still has over eighty pellets in his chest and face. But despite the pain, he manages to greet every visitor with a smile. “It was Allah’s will,” he tells plainly. “I will be alright InshAllah. Don’t worry.”

Outside Ward 7, Abdul Majid Bhat, 48, is pacing up and down the busy corridor, looking helplessly at people moving past. His sleepless eyes, unkempt hair, and blood-stained clothes — all stand witness to the pain he has gone through since July 12, the day his youngest of three sons, Zahid was injured by pellets.

A resident of Khrekshum village in Sopore, Zahid, 17, was at his friends place in Batpora, some 2km from his home, when protests erupted in the area. At 3 pm, when things seemed relatively better, Zahid decided to go home.

As he stepped out, his friend’s neighbour, whom he knew well, advised him to avoid main road. “He told me that there is still stone pelting going on at some places,” says Zahid. He took a small alley instead. However, after walking some fifty meters into the alley, when he turned right, he came face-to-face with an STF vehicle. Before he could have turned back, one of them fired at him. “I thought it was bullet and I will die,” says Zahid, taking his dark glasses off, exposing thick blonde eyelashes and a bloody red eye. “But then I felt as if my left eye is hanging out of the socket.”

As he began crying with pain, people came out of their houses and rushed him to the Sopore hospital. “They cleaned blood, put bandage on my wounds and sent me to Srinagar,” the boy says.

Zahid’s father, who rides a horse driven Tonga for living, after learning about his son’s injuries, tried desperately to manage a ride to reach Srinagar, but couldn’t. “Given the situation nobody wanted to take risk of driving to Srinagar,” says Bhat. “Besides I couldn’t afford hiring a taxi on my own.”

Finally, after convincing an acquaintance, who owned a vehicle, Bhat reached Srinagar at 11 pm. “He (Zahid) was brought here (SMHS hospital) by his friends,” he says.

Doctors told Bhat that Zahid has around fifty pellets in his abdomen, arms, face and left eye. The next day, after cleaning his wounds, Zahid was sent home and told to come back on July 20 for his surgery.

A scene inside Ward 7 of SMHS hospital Srinagar.
A scene inside Ward 7 of SMHS hospital Srinagar.

But travelling to Srinagar isn’t easy for Bhat, who had already shelled out his entire savings trying to treat his wife’s tumour. “She died two years back after nine years of painful struggle,” he says.

This forced Bhat eldest son to drop out of school after Class 9, so that he could help his father manage household expenses.

With Zahid’s doctors doubtful about any chances of saving his injured eye, Bhat is looking at a dark future. “I don’t know how I am going to mange his expenses,” he said plainly. “He has to earn for himself. There is no other way out for poor people like us.”

In the corridor, Bhat is joined by around half-a-dozen boys, all wearing cheap dark glasses. Behind them are eyes full of anger and hopelessness. The silence in the corridor is broken by rubble wheels, rushing towards ophthalmology operation theatre. Somebody from the crowd shouts, “There were protests in Kakapora, Pulwama. They (CRPF and Army) have fired pellets on protesters.”

Silently, Bhat makes way for stretchers. “Please God. No more pellet pain,” he says silently.

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