Srinagar, Aug 24: Sleeping peacefully in his father’s lap, little Aqib (age 2) has no clue how drastically things have changed for him and his parents. His father Javaid Ahmad, 33, was shot with pellets by government forces in his left eye on August 22, at his home village Nathnusa in district Kupwara; the result is similar to hundreds of other such victims, loss of complete vision in the eye.
A taxi (called sumo locally) driver, Javaid fears if he could ever get back on the steering wheel. Sitting beside him in ward 8 of the ophthalmology ward in SMHS is Javaid’s wife; all anxious about him and the days to come.
Narrating the incident, Javaid says that on last Monday, there were peaceful protests in the area in which mostly women participated.
“All of a sudden, SOG personnel and CRPF rushed in and started firing pellets on the people, they mostly targeted women in their private parts, seeing this the local men were enraged and started shouting slogans, in return the forces fired pellets upon us,” said Javaid.
He was hit with a volley of pellets mostly in his skull and few in his left eye. Already undergone one surgery in which doctors cleaned and plugged the perforation, Javaid will soon be discharged only to come back in a few weeks for another surgery. The doctors have not removed the pellets yet since the extraction at this point may further damage the eye.
While speaking to this reporter, Javaid also kept looking down at Aqib’s sleeping face. “Even though I can see him, I feel I am missing something, it is as if half the world for me has just been erased,” he says while removing the dark glasses from his eyes and wiping off the tears.
Besides Javaid, another pellet hit victim, 18 years old, Farooq Ahmad is all the more worried since he is on the verge of complete blindness as both his eyes have been hit by pellets.
This youth from Boinehama Kupwara says that he was hit by pellets when he was busy with some construction work going on inside his house yard.
“On August 12, we were sieving sand when suddenly we heard people shouting outside and then heard loud thuds, all of a sudden my son felt something hit him, blood started oozing out from both his eyes,” said Abdul Rashid, Farooq’s father.
Shocked, Rashid took his son to the nearby district hospital wherefrom he was referred to SMHS.
“While we were in the ambulance going to Srinagar, we were stopped by CRPF men at Sangrama area, they dragged us out and thrashed me and other people, they finally let us go when we started to bleed,” said Rashid.
Ironically, even after more than 45 days, the hospital keeps on receiving victims with pellet injuries to their eyes.
“As far as firing of pellets in eyes is concerned, it has not gone down even a bit. In fact it is gone severer, each day we receive at least 10 patients with pellet victims,” said an eye surgeon at the hospital.
By Shamshad Ali Writer at Kashmir Monitor
