Srinagar: In occupied Kashmir, the police have admitted that pellets fired by the personnel of Indian army, paramilitary forces and police are hitting the Kashmiri protestors above-waist and on their faces in violation of the standard operating procedures governing crowd control.
The acknowledgement has been made in a communiqué issued by Inspector General of Police Muneer Khan to all senior superintendents of police deployed in the occupied territory. The communiqué reads that pellets are fired above the waist and sometimes on the faces which is completely against the prescribed SOP devised for the use of pellet guns.
The communiqué has been issued on December 19—the day scores of people were hit by pellets during protests in Shopian. At least eleven people were hit in their eyes and were admitted to SMHS hospital in Srinagar.
This is apparently for the first time that the police have admitted the misuse of pellet guns by armed forces while dealing with the protestors in Kashmir.
On November 26 this year, a teenage student was pumped with almost a full cartridge of pellets in his stomach, damaging his vital organs. Director General of Police S P Vaid in a media interview confirmed that the police had a very less supply of deflectors even after their use was approved by the Indian Home Ministry.
A pellet gun or pump-action shotgun normally fires a single cartridge that spits out as many as 400 small pellets which don’t follow a definite path. Pellets penetrate the body’s soft tissues, and eyes, according to doctors, are the most vulnerable to damage as they are delicate.
As many as 14 people were killed due to pellets and more than 20,800 others, mostly youth, suffered injuries, 3,000 of them in eyes, since July last year when Kashmir erupted over the killing of Burhan Muzaffar Wani.
