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Thursday March 28, 2024

Fifth column: Steeped in darkness

By Murtaza Shibli
October 07, 2017

Shafqat Nazir does not respond to my uninterrupted gaze while talking to me. Instead, he continues to stare into space. His father, Nazir Ahmed Najar, senses my awkwardness as I continuously arch my neck to try to catch his eye movements.

“My son has become used to staring into nothingness [as] his life is now filled with absolutely nothing,” he says ruefully. According to a certificate by the local health department, Shafqat had suffered retinal haemorrhage due to pellet injuries and has completely lost vision. After more than half a dozen trips to the Indian city of Hyderabad and several surgical procedures, his future is laden with absolute darkness.

His father shows me a pile of medical reports that carry a regimen of treatment amid endless observations, diagnosis and test results that declare his blindness. “I wish I had died,” Shafqat tells me in a deeply wounded tone. For a moment, there is a complete silence. I try to muzzle the quietness by offering some woolly words of hope.

This provokes his father into a mixture of rage and grief. “I have finished all my savings, but there is nothing we can do,” he says with an air of melancholy. Najar is poor, with meagre earnings from selling kebabs on a roadside stall in his hometown Bijbehara. With Shafqat’s life-changing injuries and unending trips to hospitals, his family is unable to cope with the mounting bills, adding yet another layer of trauma to their lives. But that is not all.

Two weeks back, I met Shafqat outside the local judicial magistrate’s court. His father was guiding him at a gentle pace while carrying a bundle of paperwork. It came as a rude shock when Shafqat told me that he was appearing before the magistrate in a rioting case. On August 8, 2017, 11 months after he lost his vision in a pellet gun attack, the police filed a challan in the court, booking him under various penal offences such as rioting, rioting with a deadly weapon and endangering human life and safety.

It was his second hearing on the day we met. When I asked a human rights activist about the rationale of such senseless state insensitivity, he told me that this was part of a well-thought-out strategy by the state to not only exonerate the brutality of their personnel but also “justify their criminal actions against the civilian population” as all the victims are shown as rioters and mobsters.

The FIR filed by the police on September 9, 2016 – the day Shafqat was hit by the pellets – accuses him of being part of a large mob armed with Molotov cocktails and stones that was pelting stones on the police and the paramilitary force. In order to control the mob, the FIR claims, the security personnel fired pellets into the air that caused injury to one of the rioters. The injuries received by Shafqat contradict the police’s claims that they fired pellets into the air. Many FIRs are generally fake and have been concocted under duress from the higher authorities to create forged alibis in support of the state brutality enacted by their foot soldiers in khaki.

According to the medical report, the steel pellets had pierced Shafqat’s chest, abdomen, head, eyes and limbs. More than a year after the incident, the impact of pellets is still visible as his face is quite scarred and there are several pellets still lodged in his body, including his head. According to Shafqat, he was attacked by a policeman from a close range when he had left his home to check if the road was clear to go to the other side of town. Halfway through, a policeman hiding in an alleyway attacked him from a close range, causing widespread injuries – including permanent damage to his eyes. 

There are endless stories of civilians targeted by the trigger-happy police and paramilitary personnel for no apparent reason. Two weeks back, Amnesty International India launched a report on the impact of pellet injuries. The report – titled ‘Losing Sight in Kashmir: Impact of pellet-firing shotguns’ – documented the lives of 88 pellet victims whose eyesight was damaged. The report notes that the victims “have faced serious physical and mental health issues, including symptoms of psychological trauma. School and university students who were hit in the eyes said [that] they continue to have learning difficulties. Several victims who were the primary bread winners for their families fear they will not be able to work any longer”.

Prior to losing his sight, Shafqat Nazir was working as a salesman and collaborating with his father to run their household. Shafqat was also studying privately as he was unable to attend a regular school because he couldn’t afford to lose his regular income from the day job. He was content and hopeful that despite his slow pace in coping with the trials of life, he’d be able to catch up. “Now I can’t even stare at anything but [darkness] and I have no idea what to do with my life,” he tells me in a humourless expression.  Not only did he lose the job but he also couldn’t resume his studies as he was unable to appear for his 12th class examination. His life has stopped and yet it continues to batter him and his family on a daily basis.

The Amnesty report has urged the security forces to stop the use of these guns immediately “in line with international human rights standards on [the] use of force”. But the state government, headed by Mehbooba Mufti, recently claimed in the state high court that “firing pellets on protesters was not unconstitutional” and was, therefore, “within the realm of maintaining law and order situation”. It also asked the court to leave it to the state to decide the method used to enforce order.

The Mehbooba Mufti-led government’s obdurate and insensitive behaviour poses the risk of more darkness ahead as the violence continues to claim lives. In a curious twist that can only be described as comical, Mufti recently claimed that she sees “sprouting shoots of peace” in the region.

Twitter: @murtaza_shibli