Pellet Victims Grapple With Vision Loss, Govt Apathy 

SRINAGAR — At Srinagar’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital, a group of seven youth wearing glasses and most of them dressed in T-shirts and jeans, were waiting patiently outside the office of Medical Superintendent in the afternoon until a doctor emerged from the office and told them something quietly before they left the office.

As they walked away, this reporter caught up with three of them with the request for a brief chat. All of them were pellet victims, blind in one eye. “We had come to the hospital for getting disability certificates from the hospital administration,” they said.

One of them, Ashfaq Ahmad Chohan, a 20-year-old soft-spoken boy with a perpetual smile on his face had come all the way from remote Chek-Hayin village in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district. To his astonishment, Chohan said, he was not getting the certificate commensurate with 100 percent blindness of his left eye. 

“If they give me the certificate I deserve, I can apply for the job under the government’s scheme for pellet victims or I can get some other help in future if I have the certificate,” Chohan said. He added: “Now one of my eyes has been completely blinded.”

Last year, the state government announced that it would provide jobs to the worst pellet victims but so far has provided jobs to only 13 victims and financial assistance to 22 victims as per the information shared by the government in State Assembly on January 24 this year. 

According to the data collected by this reporter from SHMS, which receives most of the pellet victims with eye-injuries, the hospital has received 1,398 patients with pellet injuries from January 2015 to May 10, 2018, with most of them eye-injuries. In October 2017, the Jammu & Kashmir government told the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) that 1,726 persons including children had received pellet injuries since July 2016 across Kashmir. 

Month-wise figures about the cases of pellet injuries received at Shri Mahraja Hari Singh (SMHS), Srinagar

However, the pellet victims, especially those whose eyes have got damaged, say that they face a lot of difficulties in getting their disabilities authenticated by health officials. “As you can see, my eye is totally damaged, yet, I am being given a document which certifies that I have only 30 percent disability. I can’t understand this,” Chohan said.

When contacted for explanation as to why the pellet victims with blindness in one eye were not getting 50 percent vision disability certificates, the medical superintendent of SMHS, Dr. Saleem Tak, said that there are guidelines from the health ministry (government of India) according to which blindness in one eye was considered only 30 percent blindness. “We give the certificates to the victims, who have blindness in one eye, accordingly,” Tak said.   

Such technical and medical definitions of blindness can hardly find any traction with the pellet victims and their parents especially when the blindness has been inflicted with metal pellets.

International human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, has consistently raised strong objections against the use of pump-action shotguns in Kashmir as they fire metal pellets for dispersing protesters and stone-pelters.  Last year, the India chapter of Amnesty International started “Ban Pellet Guns Campaign” urging the Jammu & Kashmir government to ban pump-action shotguns which fire metal pellets.

Chohan said that his parents find it hard to come to terms with his disability. “When my mother looks at me, she cries loudly,” says Chohan whose father works as a mason and supports a family of eight which includes Chohan’s three younger brothers, a sister and elder brother. 

His story is quite tragic. “On July 15, 2016, I  had come to my aunt’s house in Trehgam. While I was returning home, which is some five kilometres from Trehgam, I got trapped between stone-pelting youth and government forces and ended up getting pellets in my left eye,” Chohan said. Despite remaining admitted in SMHS for one month, his eyesight couldn’t recover. “I don’t study anymore because once I do, my eyes become tearful and my headaches like anything. I had just passed 12th standard when the pellets hit my eye,” he said. 

The other two victims, 29-year-old Aijaz Ahmad Malik of Pattan in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district and 22-year-old MohsinGulzar of Pulwama have lost one of their eyes after receiving pellets. Gulzar said that his eye was operated upon five times, yet it couldn’t recover. “I was first operated upon here. When that didn’t help, I went to an eye hospital in Punjab where I got four surgeries. Nothing worked. Resultantly, I am blind in one eye and have to live with a disability for the rest of my life,” Gulzar said.   

“When I think about my disability and the burden it has put on me, I regret why I didn’t receive a bullet instead which would have taken away my life,” he said.  

For Malik, the agony inflicted by the pellets goes beyond the injury to his person. Malik said that he will never forget how his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter had to be hospitalized after she saw a thick bandage over his (Malik’s) eyes. “After visiting me in the hospital, my wife and my daughter went home. But in the evening, my wife told me that our daughter has been put on a ventilator in Children’s Hospital,” Malik said. 

“I told my brother and my friend, who sat beside me, to arrange a three-wheeler so that I visit her right now. They said it was not advisable for me to leave the hospital in such a state. But I insisted and ultimately made it to the hospital along with them. I was lucky that she recovered after eight days treatment. But I will never forget that horrible experience,” he added.    

Since May 2015, hundreds of pellet victims in Kashmir have been fighting their battles of life on their own though, some pellet victims say, the epidemic of pellet injuries to eyes during the 2016 agitation following militant commander BurhanWani’s killing had put the spotlight on pellet victims and they had received better attention from the society. 

In June last year, dozens of pellet victims got together and formed an association under Trust registration and named it Pellet Victims Welfare Trust (PVWT). “When we realized that the society and the leaders are not coming forward to help us, we got together and formed an association. Our Trust has an account and we collect donations,” said the president of PVWT, Mohammad Ashraf, who lives in Rohmoo-Pulwama and is himself a pellet victim with blindness in one eye. 

He said that they are planning to shape it like an NGO which can work for the needs of pellet victims in the long run. “We have now over 40 volunteers in different districts collecting donations mostly on Fridays in Masjids. But, so far, we have only been able to help just a few victims considering the little amount of donations we get,” Ashraf said.  

According to Ashraf, the victims find it quite arduous to collect donations as most of them are school and college going students. “We feel quite ashamed when we have to literally beg for money,” he said. 

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