“Chilli bombs? Pepper grenades? Pellet guns? Do the forces keep those only for protesting Kashmiris?”
As several people were killed and scores wounded after violence broke out in Punjab and Haryana minutes after Sirsa Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was convicted of rape by a special CBI court, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and others to twitter to ask why the pellet guns are not being used to control the crowd.
“Chilli bombs? Pepper grenades? Pellet guns? Do the forces keep those only for protesting Kashmiris?” Abdullah tweeted.
In Kashmir region, after the killing of 22-year-old militant commander, Burhan Muzaffer Wani, on July 8 last year, over 100 protesters were killed after the government forces fired bullets and pellets. However, thousands of protesters were injured due to the pellets fired by the government forces. According to the health ministry officials over 1100 youths have got visually impaired due to the pellet guns injuries in their eyes and some of them have turned blind.
Doctors at the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar say that they receive, on an average, one eye pellet injured youngster in a day, indicating that the use of the pellets on protesters has not stopped.
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.
Responding to the petition of the Bar, which was seeking ban on pellet guns, the CRPF had told the J-K High Court on August 17, 2016 that 3765 cartridges of 9 number had been fired from the pump action guns since the July 8, 2016. With each cartridge contains 450 metallic balls, the CRPF have used 1.3 million pellets on protesters in two months.
The CRPF had told the court that pellet guns, introduced in 2010, are “riot control” weapons. “In case this is withdrawn from the options available with the CRPF, CRPF personnel would have no recourse in extreme situations, but to open fire with rifles which may cause more fatalities,” the CRPF affidavit had said.
In September, 2016, the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir justified the use of pellet guns calling it as “inevitable.” The decision of the High Court forced the Kashmir Bar Association to appeal before the Supreme Court. The case is pending before the Apex Court.