Shameema Lohar (22) from south Kashmir lays motionless on a bed at the neurosurgery ward of Super Specialty Hospital here.
Shameema from Arwani village of Bijbehara — the hometown of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti —received a bullet in her abdomen during protests on July 9, a day after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.
Doctors at Super Specialty Hospital say that Shameema’s spinal cord has been damaged and she will remain paralysed for the rest of her life, if at all she survives.
The bullet has entered through the left side of her abdomen, resulting in gut perforations and burst fracture — an injury to the spine in which the vertebral body is severely compressed. The medical file of Shameema reveals that she has gut perforation with paraplegia (paralysis of the legs and lower body).
Shameema is not the only person with such an injury.
There are many patients in tertiary care hospitals of Srinagar who suffer from nerve damage as they were hit above the abdomen by bullets, pellets or tear-smoke shells during the ongoing unrest.
Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital, Bone and Joints Hospital and Super Specialty Hospital in Srinagar have admitted 27 patients with nerve injury since July 9. Of them, 21 have been admitted to SMHS Hospital. Doctors say eight of them will be paralysed for life.
Two Class XI students —Aamir Manzoor of Kulgam and Shahid Fayaz of Kokernag in south Kashmir —have been hit by bullets on head and back, respectively. Both of them are paralysed and lying motionless in the neurosurgery ward of SMHS Hospital.
The bullet has shuttered the temporal bone of Aamir and caused brain contusion. His right side of the body is paralysed.
Adjacent to his bed is Shahid, lying in a prone position. He has been operated twice and doctors have lacerated portions of his stomach and liver which were damaged by the bullet. “We have sealed his wounds but due to the injury in his vertebrae, he is unable to move his lower limbs,” said a neurosurgeon at SMHS Hospital.
Even after recuperating, most of these spinal injury patients would be left physically handicapped in the lower limbs, he said.
Doctors said the condition of these patients was stable, adding that most of the injured are “half-dead”.
They say that there seems to be a design behind the firing on protesters. Doctors say that security forces are targeting protesting youths on vital organs, rendering them handicapped temporarily, if not for life.
27 Youth admitted with nerve injuries
