Pellet gun use
The High Court dismissed the petition arguing that what kind of force has to be used at the relevant point of time or in a given situation and place has to be decided by the persons in charge of the place where the protest is happening.
Though the courts may have put forth their arguments but the way the pellet guns have been used in Kashmir also should have been taken into account. The pellet guns were misused in 2016 following the death of militant commander Burhan Wani to quell street protests.
However, the forces personnel escaped the responsibility of acting in haste at times and over use of these pellet guns.
The pellet use left almost 100 people blinded, that too for life. In July 2016, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association, after seeing condition of pellet wounded youngsters, filed a petition asking for ban on the use of pellet guns by the government forces. Later the centre government also said it constituted an expert committee to explore an alternative to pellet guns. However, it said, there cannot be a complete withdrawal of the use of pellet guns in the Valley.
Pellet shotguns have been termed as inaccurate by human rights groups as well after hundreds of civilians were injured due to their massive use during the protests during the past few years in Kashmir.
Hundreds were blinded, prompting human rights groups to seek a ban on the use of pellet guns. International human rights group Amnesty International has described the use of pellet guns as inherently inaccurate, stating in a report that the weapon that was meant to be deployed for crowd control has been responsible for blinding, killing and traumatizing people.
There are around 300 people who have been affected directly by the use of pellet guns and more than a 100 people have been left blinded permanently due to the use of pellet guns. Amnesty International India has documented the cases of 88 people whose eyesight was damaged — some temporarily, some permanently – by metal pellets between 2014 and 2017. Their lives have changed entirely, and they are struggling to cope with the challenges that face them.
The issue has assumed such mammoth proportions that an organisation for the welfare of the pellet victims known as ‘Pellet Victims Welfare Trust’ has also been created and these people have been asking the government and other agencies to roll out some welfare measures for the affected lot.
KV News
