Riddled with angst

For close to two weeks now, the silence on the curfewed streets is punctured intermittently by the sirens of ambulances ferrying the injured to hospital. The sound of teargas shells fired by security forces can be heard in the distance.

Silence, enforced by a heavy CRPF and police presence, hangs heavy on the streets littered with pelted stones and roadblocks.

Kashmir has been on the boil since the July 8 killing of 22-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani in the Kokernag area of Anantnag district in south Kashmir. (Wani left home in 2010, at the age of 15, to pick up the gun.)

The civilian death toll in the ensuing unrest has crossed 40 (according to hospital sources), with 36 in south Kashmir alone. The injured number more than 3,000 (including 1500 from the police and paramilitary forces). According to official sources, about 134 people sustained eye injuries, including many who were blinded by pellets in one or both eyes.

An information blackout followed the curfew, with the authorities clamping down on local media and banning local newspaper publication for five days after the outbreak of violence. Mobile network and mobile internet, except BSNL broadband, remains snapped across the valley.

Major public hospitals are overflowing with youths injured in the firing, many have pellet injuries and are battling for their lives in the ICU. At Srinagar’s SMHS Hospital, the injured continue to pour in from across north and south Kashmir. Many of those accompanying the injured said they were beaten up by security forces on their way to hospital.

Despite the curfew, people from adjoining areas have visited the hospitals, offering to donate blood, or bring food and other essential items. Many local non-governmental organisations are also assisting at the hospital, distributing free medicine or other requirements to the injured.

Doctors had to put in extra time, beyond 24 hours in some cases, to attend to the flood of patients. Dr Imtiyaz Ahmad, a resident doctor attending to pellet injuries in the ophthalmology ward, has not had a moment’s rest for almost two weeks now.

He recalled that on the evening of July 9, CRPF and police personnel had fired teargas shells into the casualty ward, leaving doctors and other hospital staff choking and unable to treat patients for a couple of hours. “We had to close down the casualty unit for three hours after it was filled with smoke,” he said. “They didn’t even spare the hospital.”

Doctors are worried about pellet injuries at the hospital’s two ophthalmology wards. Dr Sajjad Khanday estimated that there are over 100 pellet injuries and said it was increasing with every passing day of unrest. These include many teenagers and even five- to nine-year-olds. “Almost 90 per cent of them are going to lose their eyesight,” Dr Khanday rues. Many families cannot afford the costly treatment, which includes advanced care outside the state in some cases, and may be forced to sell their land to pay the bills.

Inside the ophthalmology wards, sadness pervades young patients as they struggle to come to grips with the fact that they’ll have to live with diminished vision for the rest of their lives. Some of them have been operated upon once; a few require more surgeries.

Riyaz Ahmad, who has lost vision in his right eye, is unable to remain still. The 24-year-old was injured in clashes in south Kashmir’s Tral town. “The people who were accompanying him to hospital were pulled out of the ambulance at several places and beaten up by the forces,” said his brother Parvaiz Ahmad, who managed to reach the hospital in another ambulance. “CRPF troops also pelted stones on the ambulances carrying the injured to hospitals,” he added.

On another bed in the ward, 16-year-old Burhan, a high school student from Tral, sat restlessly. His right eye is bloodshot and his face is swollen.

He and several other teenagers in his town were targeted when they went around screaming “Azaadi”. “The police fired mercilessly on my face. I’m another Burhan,” he said with pride, raising his fist in the air. The attendants surrounding the teen smiled, asking him to rest. Little Burhan, however, continued to joke with his cousins.

In the adjacent ward, Shabir Ahmad, a 20-year-old from Rajpora in Pulwama district of south Kashmir, cannot comprehend how his eyes were targeted. “I don’t know how I was hit so quickly in my eyes,” he said. Had he known that pellets were being aimed at his face, he would have ducked in time, he added. “I was just standing on the street and felt a pain in my eyes.” On the way to the hospital, government forces had stopped the ambulance and abused his mother, he said.

“They almost killed me,” he said, staring at me; and, after an uncomfortable pause, asked, “Will I be able to see again?”

After the surgery, the doctors are unsure if he will regain vision in his right eye.

South Kashmir saw the maximum number of civilian casualties in the firing on protesters. Dr Nadeem Rashid, a young surgeon at the Anantnag south district hospital, said the small staff worked overtime to operate on the scores of youth brought in with bullet injuries in the initial days of the unrest.

On July 10, he had operated on 20 of them. A few had died at the hospital, while a few more had succumbed en route to hospitals in Srinagar. He has clicked photos of a bullet he removed from the stomach of a victim. “The bullet was lodged very close to his aorta (the major blood vessel),” he said.

All the victims he treated were in their early twenties. “And all the bullet injuries were above-waist,” he pointed out. “These were not rubber bullets, but AK47 bullets,” he said, showing us more pictures of the bullets removed.

On July 9 alone, this south district hospital witnessed six deaths. Dr Rashid had declared them brought-dead. “I cannot forget that day. The forces had aimed only to kill,” he went on, gathering his thoughts after a brief pause. “I’m a witness.”

(Majid Maqbool is a Srinagar-based journalist and writer)

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