Tears flowed unhindered down Zareefa’s face as she helped her husband Rafiq Ahmed walk out of the trauma theatre of the SMHS Hospital.
Outside the theatre, an anxious crowd was awaiting news about their injured kin.
Metal pellets fired by government forces into people protesting against an anti-militancy operation in Kundalan village of Shopian on Tuesday had perforated Ahmed’s left eye. Every time Zareefa looks at bruised, swelled eye of her husband, she breaks into sobs.
Like her, many families and friends enquired from eye specialists about chances of saving vision in the eyes of their dear ones hit by pellets.
Doctors evaded queries and concerns of the attendants whose direct experience of pellet horror is new. But those who have suffered its consequences tried to be more direct.
“No one gets their complete vision back after pellet injury, but pray to Allah for a miracle,” an elderly man told a group of newly-arrived attendants.
On Tuesday, till this report was filed, 12 people from Shopian were brought to the SMHS Hospital for specialised treatment.
While nine had eye injuries due to pellets, two more had suffered injuries to other parts of their bodies.
One more person, a teenager, Tamshil Khursheed, was declared brought dead at the hospital. He had bullet in the head, hospital authorities said.
At Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), 20-year-old Umer Zargar, with a firearm injury in the abdomen, was admitted in a critical condition.
Umer is a resident of Pulwama. Doctors said he had suffered damage to spleen and was being observed. A senior doctor at the hospital said that the patient had suffered Grade 3 trauma, a very serious injury.
“Till we operate upon him, nothing can be said,” the doctor added.
At the SMHS Hospital, Muzaffar Hussain, injured with pellets in the body and head, was being kept under observation, although his condition was stated to be stable.
“He has bleeding in lungs and hemorrhage in skull,” a doctor treating him said.
Four people with bullet injuries to limbs were being treated at Bone and Joint hospital Barzulla. Hospital administration said that all the four had soft tissue injuries and were stable.
Doctors at the SMHS Hospital said that during the past one week, barring those admitted on Tuesday, four people with pellet injuries to eye had been brought to the hospital.
“Pellets continue to blind. Most of these are teenagers and young men,” a senior doctor at the hospital said.