J&K HC refuses ban on pellet use in rare cases

Court will wait for government decision on the same; Centre appointed expert committee is reviewing the matter.

Srinagar hospitals continue to receive dozens of pellet victims from different areas of Kashmir even as the protests have scaled down after the Army started dominating the highway and all South Kashmir districts. “On the 76th day of unrest, we received minors and a few women with pellet injuries in their eyes,” said a junior doctor of SMHS hospital of Srinagar.

Allegations have surfaced that pellet guns are being used by the security forces as the first option, but the government has categorically told the state HC that tear-gas shells and lathi-charge are used in most cases to disperse the protesters. “The government is not using tear-smoke shells and PAVA shells as alternatives to pellet guns. The security forces and police are using pellet guns as first option to disperse the protests,” alleged a civil society member at the SMHS hospital, while attending some fresh victims of pellet guns.

According to the Head of the Department (HoD), Ophthalmology, SMHS Hospital, Dr Tariq Qureshi, 60% of the injured are teenagers. “This is a lethal weapon. It has devastated hundreds of families as teenagers in these families have lost vision. Despite contrary claims by the authorities, pellet victims are coming to my ward on a daily basis,” Tariq Qureshi told The Sunday Guardian.

While talking to this newspaper, a group of doctors at SMHS hospital alleged, “We as doctors have witnessed the nature of deaths and injuries of patients admitted here… (We can say) that the security forces were targeting people from close range and they have intentions to kill and maim people here.” According to the doctors, at least 62 patients have lost vision in both eyes because of pellets.

Meanwhile, according to the attendants and the family members of pellet victims, they have to face police questioning in the wards of the hospital. “Police has been profiling patients admitted in SMHS hospital,” agreed Dr Sajjad Ahmad of the hospital. He said that due to the fear of police, many youngsters have not returned back for treatment to their ward. The Kashmiri youth from Anantnag overcame immense difficulties to appear for the Army recruitment drive. They had to travel by foot for kilometers during the night to reach the recruitment spot, as travelling during the day would have made them easy targets of the separatists who would not view their participation in the drive kindly. Despite curfew and unrest in Anantnag, hundreds of youngsters from the villages rushed clandestinely to the recruitment venue, as word had it in south Kashmir’s villages that this time there would be no verification procedure except for scrutinising the candidate’s possible militant links. “We have been told that even if we had been active stone-pelters we will get this job,” said one of the youngsters who travelled 15 kilometres on foot to reach the venue. These candidates not only faced the risk of bearing the brunt of the anger of the stone throwing crowds, but also risked ostracisation in their respective villages.

Many of the youth tried to avoid the media, by saying that they feared that their lives would be endangered if they spoke openly on the matter. Most of them said that their families were badly in need of financial support. However, a few of them told TV news channels that they were ready to join the Army and serve the country.

Initially 6,000 youth had applied for the Army posts, but on the day of recruitment around 400 to 500 could make it to the venue. In the drive for the recruitment of Special Police Officers (SPOs), according to the authorities, around 25,000 youth applied for these posts. The government has decided to counter the stone-pelting mobs by the recruitment of SPOs in J&K Police and they have received a healthy response so far. A senior police officer told this newspaper that even stonepelters can apply for these posts and they would be very lenient while giving those jobs so that they are able to come out of this cycle of violence.

Kashmir Bar Association had filed a petition in the J&K High Court, demanding a ban on the use of pellet guns by the security forces for crowd control.