Ulfat, Nazir and Sameer have not been around for 20 years but they already bear the scars of a battle.
They are some of the victims recovering in Srinagar’s SMHS Hospital.
Ulfat, 18, was out on the street looking for her brother when protests broke out. “I was going home when a cop shot me,” said Ulfat, a class 12 student.
“There were protest going on and I was near a house when policemen came charging at me and shot me at the leg,” said Sameer, also a class 12 student.
Sixteen-year-old Nazir also said he was shot by a police officer.
In the 10 days since the killing of terrorist Burhan Wani, more than 2,100 civilians have been injured in firing by security forces as protests have bruised and bloodied the streets of Kashmir. Of these, around 125 were hit by bullets.
“Bullet injury is more dangerous as far as orthopaedics goes. But pellet injury is more dangerous as far as eye injury goes,” said Abdul Rashid Budoo, a medical superintendent at the Bone and Joint Hospital in Srinagar.
The story is no different on the other side of the trenches. At the Army base hospital in Srinagar, 23 Jammu and Kashmir policemen and paramilitary soldiers are undergoing treatment. Fifteen of them splinter injuries others injured in stone pelting.
Security forces say terrorists are hiding behind protesters and attacking the forces but firing is the last resort when all non-lethal means fail to control the crowds.
“There are situations where the crowds are attacking. They are not demonstrating, they are not protesting, they are attacking. So when a small party of policemen or a police post with seven eight people is attacked by a crowd of thousands of people, then this pattern does not work. They don’t have tear-smoke everywhere.
Senior officer or magistrates are not available and there is no way of going through this so firing takes place,” said MK Khajuria, former Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police.
On Friday, as they were dealing with violent protesters in Kulgam, terrorists hurled grenades and fired indiscriminately injuring seven of their men, police said. Three other civilians received gunshot and splinter injuries and one civilian was killed in firing by terrorists, they said.
Mudassir, one of the policemen critically injured in that attack, is recovering in the intensive care unit or ICU.
“The splinters in his case have gone into abdomen, in his chest cavity and there is a splinter which has gone behind his left ear into the skull and is still lodged in the brain tissue,” Brigadier MS Tevatia, Commandant of the Army Base Hospital told NDTV.
Similar grenade attacks have taken place in Kupwara and Nowhatta in the past few days. Those injured say their protection gear is just inadequate for grenades and other fire arms.
As tensions in Kashmir refuse to die down, the cost of the conflict only keeps mounting.
