Though state government has justified the deployment of non-lethal weapons to minimize the loss of lives in protests, in reality their excessive use has wrought havoc in Kashmir. Not only have people been killed, scores of youth across the Valley have also lost their eye-sight, either in one or both the eyes. Reflecting the grim toll taken by the widespread use of pellet-guns to quell protests in Kashmir Valley, a study conducted two years ago by Sri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital says that 45 youth have permanently lost their sight in one or both eyes in 2010 unrest. Ever since, the hospital has reported many more such cases of youth with damaged eyes. And this is but the data of only one hospital. The other hospitals have their own figures. Recently, a book Scars of Pellet Gun: The Brutal Face of Suppression written by the head of Hurriyat Legal Cell Mannan Bukhari details the injuries and fatalities caused by the use of pellet guns. Mannans book is based on the information acquired through the mechanism of Right to Information, and the stories of survivors and the families of the deceased. According to Mannan, so far ten people have lost their lives and over 1500 have been injured in police action since 2010.
In 2013, this tragic state of affairs persuaded two lawyers and Hurriyat Conference to file a petition in Jammu and Kashmir High Court seeking ban on the use of pellet guns and pepper gas for mob control but the court rejected the petition. “These petitions, styled as PIL, have been filed without any empirical research and in a totally casual manner. As a result of averments have been made which have no authenticity; without any supportive documentary evidence,” a Division Bench comprising of Chief Justice of JK High Court Justice M M Kumar and Justice A M Magrey said dismissing the petition. But as the situation stands, the use of these weapons continues to take a heavy toll in the form of the full or partial loss of eyesight by scores of youth. The evidence for it is recorded in Valleys hospitals. And now also in Punjab hospitals. According to a recent report carried by a national daily, a super-specialty hospital for eye-care in Amritsar receives two-three patients with pellet injuries from Kashmir every month.
If anything, this reveals that the states response to recurrent protests leaves a lot to desire. Despite some due effort to rid the police of its violent counter-insurgency reflexes and get it back into crowd control mode, the situation has not showed any remarkable improvement. The response to protests for the most part continues to be far in excess to the gravity of situation. The massive toll of the injured and the grim nature of the injuries inflicted on a large number of the youth is a testament to the extraordinary amount of force used to quell the current anger. The pellet guns are supposed to be the non-lethal weapons but it is their indiscriminate and unguarded use that has done the maximum damage. This calls for a serious debate about the law and order methods being deployed by the police and paramilitaries to tackle stone throwing youth, a recurrent phenomenon in Kashmir considering the perennially fragile political situation of the state. There is a need to consider as to why protests in Valley are more likely to result in deaths and injuries to people than a similar public disquiet in other parts of the country. Answer to these questions will certainly be more handy to the improvement of policing in the state in future.
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