Yet another youth is fighting for his vision in a Srinagar hospital after he was injured in the firing of pellets by the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

Nineteen-year-old Sahil Zahoor has a pellet lodged deep inside his left eye and the doctors who operated on him have yet not been able to extract the iron ball.

“We have performed one surgery on his left eye but the pellet is lodged in the posterior segment of the eye. We will have to conduct another surgery. The eye has no vision right now,” said Dr. Mir Omar Farooq, Casualty Medical Officer at Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital.

Sahil, a Class XI student at Greenland School in Srinagar, was returning from his cricket practice on Saturday afternoon when the pellets sprayed by the police on a crowd of protesters hit him all over his upper body and face.

“I was walking home when the pellets hit me. I felt nails piercing my flesh but I could not see anything,” Sahil told The Hindu. Two of Sahil’s friends — Arsalan Wani and Sameer Ahmad — rushed him to the hospital where he was operated upon.

“The police immediately arrived here and arrested those two boys. They tried to drag my son too even though he was blinded in one eye and was in excruciating pain,” said Sahil's father Zahoor Ahmad Chonka. “The doctors and nurses and all of us pleaded with the police to let Sahil get medical treatment.” No information was available on the two friends the police took with them.

Doctors hopeful

The doctors working on Sahil said they are hopeful of recovery of his vision but they are distressed over the growing number of cases of pellet blindings. According to the doctors at SMHS Hospital, they have attended to over 700 patients with pellet injuries in the last five years.

“This must stop. The use of pellet guns and other weapons is brutal and inhuman. An entire generation of people is being quietly blinded and maimed. We have seen hundreds of these cases in the last five years and it is continuing without any hitch,” said Dr. Sajad Khanday, a senior ophthalmologist at the SMHS hospital.

Last month, The Hindu had reported about 16-year-old Hamid Nazir Bhat from Palhalan village in north Kashmir who had lost vision in his right eye due to pellet injuries.