Rioters in Kashmir left blind as police use pellet guns to quash crowds

Indian security forces have blinded scores of civilians, including children, with pellet shotguns employed to control rioting in the state's northern, disputed Kashmir province.

At least 46 people have died and some 2,000 civilians and 1,600 security forces personnel have been injured in rioting that shows little sign of abating in the principality.

A curfew remains in force across the Kashmir Valley, and security forces have ignored appeals by human rights groups and political parties to stop firing their pellet guns on the grounds that the weapons are “non lethal” and essential for crowd control.

Though the exact number who had suffered eye injuries from these guns is unknown, doctors in Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar said they had performed over 250 eye surgeries to remove sharp iron bits from retinas.

These pellet guns are principally 12-gauge shotguns that fire cartridges containing hundreds of small iron balls and metal shards. Doctors treating patients said these guns, first deployed in 2010, now used sharper and more irregular shaped pellets with lethal effect and innumerable people were likely to lose sight in one or both eyes. They spoke on condition of anonymity, as they fear repercussions by state authorities for revealing details of state repression.

“We have received 117 such [eye injury] cases and seven people had been blinded,” said an ophthalmologist at one hospitals in Srinagar.

"I appeal to God to kill me. It's better than to live out the rest of my life as a blind man," said one rioter whose eyes are being treated at a hospital in neighbouring Punjab state.

Aiming to kill

Kashmir’s recent protests erupted in early July, after Indian troops killed

Burhan Wani

, a 22-year-old Muslim militant leader opposing Indian rule in the principality.

“We use a special cartridge that has low impact and is non-lethal,” said Rajeshwar Yadav, of the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force that is in the vanguard of fighting rioters, referring to the guns.

The security forces also maintain that they are aiming low whilst firing. But local doctors said a majority of those wounded had injuries above the waist. “Government forces are deliberately aiming at chests and heads,” one doctor said. “They appear to be aiming to kill.”