Anil Raina  

19-month-old Hiba Nissar was injured during clashes in J&K’s Shopian on Sunday; may lose partial vision. Her wails pierce through ward no 8 of the ophthalmology ward at Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital in Srinagar even as her helpless mother tries to ease her pain. Nineteen-month-old Hiba Nissar was struck in the right eye by a pellet on Sunday as locals clashed with security forces following an encounter that neutralised six terrorists in Shopian.

My daughter may lose her vision, Hiba’s mother says as she cradles her crying child, disabled with the inability to reduce her child’s pain.

As tears roll down her eyes, Masarat Jan tells Mirror, “I can’t see my baby in so much pain. It’s unbearable.” What was her fault? she asks everyone who cares to listen.

Following the killing of six terrorists, protesting youth engaged with security forces and Hiba was hit by a stray pellet outside her house in Kaprin village of south Kashmir’s Shopian district.

“Due to protests and heavy tear gas shelling, we felt suffocated inside our house. We tried to move out and as soon as I opened the kitchen door, security forces fired pellets towards us and my daughter was hit,” recalls Masarat Jan. She too sustained pellet injuries on her arm.

I wish the pellets had hit me instead of her, says Hiba’s father Nazir Ahmed, who was away for work when the tragedy took place. “We are witnessing bloodshed every day. This cycle of violence must end,” says Ahmed, a daily wage labourer.

“The pellet has penetrated deep inside her eye. She will require surgery,” a doctor at SMHS Hospital told Mirror.

Courtesy: Mirror: 26th Nov, 2018