South Asia Human Rights Journalist Association

Srinagar, September 21:The little girl who used to say that she will give her life for the freedom of Kashmir gave it up just as she said. On Monday she went out to participate in a public rally to demand the Azaadi of Kashmir, and fell to her death, when her tender heart was stunned by a sound shell fired by Indian  troops that exploded in a deafening blast. Fifty persons were injured in that rally from the shells, pellets and brute force used by government troops. But it was Khushboo Jan, who had turned 11 years old this June, whom the people of all Shopian, where she lived in Gandapora village, came out to mourn the next day. Tasleema Akhtar, mother of Khushboo, said, “She was our hope, she was our miracle, she was our son, everything.” At her funeral in her village on Tuesday, the mourners cried, “Their children are murderers, thieves. Ours are immortal.”
 
 
 Four days after a child, Nasir Shafi, was killed by indian forces, Theed, Srinagar his neighborhood in Harwan, is peopled only by Indian paramilitary personnel. More than 200 CRPF personnel, armed with assault rifles, pellet guns and tear smoke guns, stand in groups of threes and fours on a road stretch of less than 500 metres. Scores of troops had been similarly deployed on the Nishat-Harwan road to thwart a protest march the locals had planned on Nasir’s chaharum, the ritualistic fourth day of his death. “No one can step out of their house today. There is curfew here. There is nothing for the Press to do here,” a group of CRPF personnel say, pressing the reporter to return. Since that morning, the locals’ say that the Indian  police and CRPF went on a rampage after the people protested against Nasir’s killing. 
“They came into our houses; they broke TVs, refrigerators, our doors and windows. They broke our water pipes, attacked the electric transformers. It is war here they have declared on us,” said a local who requested anonymity for fear of police reprisal. His elder sister brings it. Four days of intermittent sobbing has left her throat rough. Two of her cousin sisters usher her into a room and restrain her when she breaks into another bout of wailing. She begins to talk to the beloved departed brother:
“When will you wear this bag again? When will you put on the straps of this bag again, my brother,” she says and demonstrates how the child actually used to wear the bag. By now, her voice is no longer a creak but a howl.
She now presses a notebook to her heart, as if hugging the departed brother himself. The family members try to pull her away from the bag and his books but she warns them of harming herself. In his notebooks, Nasir wrote carefully with a flowing hand.
In his Kashmiri notebook, he had written lokut (small) as the synonym for mosoom (innocent). On 25 November last year, an entry on Page 1 of the social sciences notebook reads:   ‘UNIT IST STARTS NOW’ Chapter Name: Democracy Chapter No: 1
“I will try to see if there is something else I can do. There surely must be something else that can bring her vision back,” said Mushtaq Ahmed Lone, father of the 14-year-old girl who lost her vision on July 12 to the assault by forces. Even though doctors have closed all doors of hope for vision restoration of Insha’s only eye left after forces fired a volley of pellets at her, her father is still determined not to give up. “I will try to see if there is something else I can do. There surely must be something else that can bring her vision back,” said Mushtaq Ahmed Lone, father of the 14-year-old girl who lost her vision on July 12 to the assault by forces.
The father is distraught at the sight of her daughter, with her eyes visionless and her face disfigured due to the injury. “I wish I could give her my eyes. But doctors have said that is not possible,” he said, and broke down.
The 14-year-old girl from South Kashmir’s Shopian district whose both eyes were devastated by the deadly pellets, has undergone one more surgery at Aditya Jyot Hospital in indian city Mumbai on Tuesday as the last hope for her and her family that she would see the world again. But so far, there has been no improvement in her vision. A team of doctors, led by Dr. S Natarajan carried out a three-hour-long surgery on Insha at the Aditya Jyot Hospital, one of the most premier eye-care institutes in India, on September 13.
“There is no improvement in her vision after the surgery,” Dr Natarajan told Greater Kashmir over phone. Elaborating, he said the surgery that retina surgeons performed on Insha was discussed and cleared by the Society of Ocular Trauma. “We knew there was minimal chance but we decided to take a chance,” he said. “If you take the chance there is a hope. If you don’t, then there is none.” Giving details of the surgery, Dr Natarajan said: “Half of the retina in her left eye had been destroyed by the pellets; the remaining half had blood stuck to it.”
A class 5th student, Tamana is the youngest among three sisters and her father Ashiq Ahmed Rather is a laborer. The family lives in Tulmulla area in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district. Doctors have diagnosed her ‘left eye perforating injury + vitreous hemorrhage.’  Tamana Ashiq, 11, has lost vision in her left eye that was pierced by pellets fired by  Indain armed forces in her locality on July 10. As per the family of the victim, doctors have told them that there are some chances that Tamana may regain vision but it will take time.
Recalling the fateful day Tamana said that she was playing in the lawns of her house alongside the road without knowing that some protests are going outside. Suddenly a police party chasing a group of protesters passed through the area. 
“The policemen fired pellets on the protesters and a pellet hit my left eye and nose after which I fell unconscious and only regained it in the hospital,” says Tamana. “I am not able to see anything with my left eye.”
“There is not much improvement in the eyesight. Doctors have asked us to wait and have put her on medicines for some one month before they take a decision on operating upon the injured eye again for the third time,” mother of the victim told Greater Kashmir. She said that everyone in the family is worried and hope and pray that she should be alright. She said that Tamana didn’t show any signs of improvement at SMHS Hospital during her early treatment there and later she was taken to Indian city Amritsar where she was operated upon twice that cost about Rs 1.5 lakh. “No one helped us.”
Taekwondo champ arrested under black law PSA, PSA slapped on Bandipora ML leader
The family of an award-winning Taekwondo athlete Ashoo is unaware of his whereabouts since his imprisonment under black law Public Safety Act. Sakeena, the mother of the youth, told Kashmir Reader that her son was booked under PSA on September 16, but she was neither given the order nor told of his place of imprisonment. Ashoo, Sakeena’s son, was arrested by police on September 6 from his home in Padshahi Bagh area of Srinagar. Subsequently, his family moved court to secure bail. On the day the family secured the bail order and went with it to the police station where he was lodged, police told them that Ashoo had been booked under PSA.
The authorities has booked senior Muslim League leader Asadullah Parray under  black law Public Safety Act for his involvement in pro-freedom movement. His family said that Parray was detained under the draconian law for the fifth time and sent to Kot Balwal jail in Jammu on September 12. Parray has five children—four daughters and a son—who have been left at the mercy of circumstances. His wife died of natural causes three years ago. “My father was arrested on August 13 last year. We got court orders for his bail but police continued to detain him until dossier for the PSA was formed. They (police) continuously deceived us on his detention,” Parray’s 18-year eldest daughter Mariya Assad told Kashmir Reader. This is the fifth consecutive time that PSA has been slapped on Parray.