“These patients will take a lot of time to recover. They have been so brutally injured that even the doctors, who are used to see such trauma, got scared after seeing them.”
Besides the bullets and pellets, people have been on the receiving end of the batons and gun butts of government forces. The victims have been left with fractured facial bones to be fixed by doctors at Valley’s lone dental college and hospital.
Fayaz Ahmad, a tailor, had come out of his home to offer funeral prayers for the boy who was killed in Lethpora, Pampore.
“After the funeral prayers were over, protests broke out and government forces tried to disperse angry people by using pellet guns,” says Jahangir, Fayaz’s cousin.
Fayaz, whose jaws are wired together, is not able to speak.
Even as he tries his jumbled words are incomprehensible. He gestures his cousin to speak on his stead.
“When police used force on the protesters, Fayaz ran and in the stampede fell and then policemen beat him up, leaving him badly injured,” Jehangir adds.
Dr Shahid Farooq, a dentist, says, “His jaw bone has been fractured. We have operated him and given him treatment.”
Twenty-three patients have visited Dental College & Hospital with broken facial bones in the last one month of the unrest triggered by the killing of the Hizbul Mujahideen commander, Burhan Muzzafar Wani. Seventy-seven cases of beating by government forces have also been reported at SMHS hospital.
Sahil Khan, 18, a resident of Habba Kadal, fears to say that police has beaten him up. “I fell from scooty and injured myself.”
But Dr Shahid, who is treating Sahil, says, “There is fear among patients. They think if they reveal the reason of getting injured they will land in trouble.”
“A doctor can make out between a road accident and a beating,” he adds.
Dr Danish says Sahil’s zygomatic bone, known as cheekbone in common parlance, is fractured, and lower jaw and right arm are also fractured.
“The nature of the injury clearly suggests that they have been caused because of intense beating.”
Talking about the injuries of patients, who have been discharged after surgeries, Dr Danish says, “When protests broke out in Kashmir after the killing of Burhan Wani, the first patient we received was Rameez from Anantnag. He was beaten up by police and his eyelids were lacerated and jaw bone fractured. It was difficult to look at him, so grave were his injuries. Another patient Sahil had uneven cuts on his face.”
“These patients will take a lot of time to recover. They have been so brutally injured that even the doctors, who are used to see such trauma, got scared after seeing them.”
(RK)
