Dressed in a red pheran (a traditional Kashmiri overcoat) and a scarf, Insha Mushtaq, 22, sits at her house in Sedow, a village in South Kashmir. But she cannot see the picturesque environment around her. Insha lost her eyes in July 2016 when pellets blew on her face and she lost her eyes.
Mushtaq Ahmad, her father, is seated at a distance from her. As we talk, Insha would often interrupt, reminding him of the specific dates and days she had spent in the hospital back in 2016. She would often touch her forehead and eyebrows.
“For the past few days, I feel itching around my eyes,” she says laughing. After seven years, Insha’s house is again frequented by journalists and politicians as she has qualified Class 12 J&K Board examination securing 367 marks out of 500. It’s a remarkable feat for her considering the challenges she faces.
“Even babber-sher was here,” Insha says laughing. She is referring to Peerzada Muhammad Shafi Shah, who contested from the Khag constituency of Budgam in the District Development Council polls in 2021. He lost the polls, but he is popular on the social media sites for his gaffes. He calls himself babber sher (lion). “He was shouting about the BJP,” Insha says with a sardonic laugh.
Insha says the scars of July 2016 are still fresh in her mind when a volley of pellets ruptured her face and eyes. It took her months to heal from the trauma.
“How could I forget it,” she says. On July 11, 2016, Insha and her family members had taken refuge in an upstairs room of their house in the village. On the day, Insha was preparing to visit her uncle’s house. Suddenly, she heard tear gas canisters being fired outside her house. She went towards the window to get a glimpse of the commotion outside. Her house is located adjacent to the road. As Insha opened the window, a pellet gun was fired at the window, which blew the window and her face. “I fell down. I tried to recite Quran, but I couldn’t,” Insha says. “My forehead was burning from the inside,” she says. “She was on the floor. I saw blood flowing out of her face,” says her father.
She was taken to the Shopian District Hospital, which is around 15 km from her residence, but the doctors were horrified to see her pellet-ridden face. The doctors referred her to Srinagar Sheri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital. She was in a coma for the next four days. Once she came out of coma, she was not able to see. “It was all dark. My eyes and forehead were all bandaged. I thought I had a deep wound on my forehead and once the bandage was removed I was unable to see,” she says.
Insha’s badly wounded face outraged Kashmiris all across the valley forcing the Peoples’ Democratic Party-led government to step in. The cornered Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti promised all help to her. After a month-long stay at the SMHS hospital, Insha was moved to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi. She remained at AIIMS for about two months. During her stay at AIIMS, Chief Minister Mufti visited her.
It was at the AIIMS she heard her father talking to another person that her vision will not return. “I wept bitterly that day. Till then I had some hope. My father then started consoling me that my eyesight will return,” she says as her father looks towards her.
On September 13, 2016, Insha was taken to the Aditya Jyoti Eye Hospital in Mumbai, where Dr S Natrajan treated her for around 24 days. Dr Natrajan, who was the Director of Aditya Jyoti Eye Hospital, and also the President of the Ocular Trauma Society of India, visited Kashmir thrice in 2016 and operated on the eyes of over 200 pellet-hit victims. He is a well-known name in the valley for treating pellet victims. According to Insha’s father, Natrajan told them that Insha has no perception of light, which meant that she had turned blind. “And we lost all hope,” he adds.
Insha and her family moved to Delhi from Mumbai for another check-up at AIIMS before returning home in the first week of October 2016. As she had become the face of Kashmiri protests that year, scores of Kashmiri students studying in different universities went to meet her and talk to her. They would bring presents to her. During the following next two months, she developed an affinity with them. She thought they were her friends. But when she returned home from Delhi, they forgot about her leaving her emotionally bruised. “I have no friend now except my mother. She is everything to me,” she says.
Her father says Insha was initially shifted to Delhi from SMHS for eye treatment. But Insha raises her voice to correct her father. “Papa, you don’t know. I had no forehead. I was referred to AIIMS by the doctors at the SMHS and my forehead was operated. You don’t remember,” she says pointing towards the scars on her forehead.
“The doctors at the AIIMS conducted four surgeries on my forehead to repair it,” she says raising her voice while her father mutes himself. “I was in the ICU for seven days at AIIMS,” she says. Her father says she was very calm before she was hit by pellets. “Now she become very angry,” he adds. Since 2017, she has been visiting the SMHS hospital for check-ups as scores of pellets are still in her body, and she has also been visiting a private hospital for the past two years.
According to the health department of Kashmir, hundreds of protesters were wounded in the protests that erupted after the killing of Hizbul Mujahedeen militant Burhan Wani. During the turbulent summer, 1,100 protesters, whom police describe as stone throwers, had pellet wounds in their eyes. Most of the people who had pellets in the eyes were described as visually impaired by doctors.
Sedow is a picturesque village in the vicinity of the Hirpura wildlife area. Over the years, the area had remained peaceful except for the protests in 2016. In 2017, Insha qualified the matriculation—during the examination her helper would read out question papers to her and she would tell her answers to pen down.
After Class 10th, Insha enrolled herself at the Delhi Public School in Srinagar in 2018 to study Braille. She got admission in the Delhi Public School through an NGO called Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ). In Srinagar, the chairperson of the NGO, Nadir Ali, says he was more worried about her fee as no one would come forward to help her financially. He says one night he got a call from Ragu Raman, a philanthropist and advocate for accessible education. “Ragu Sir told me that he has seen Insha’s interviews and found to be a bright child. After a pause, Ragu Raman said he would take care of her admission and I was relieved,” Nadir Ali says. Now Ali’s office at Rajbagh has become another address for Insha. The CPJ also hired a two-room set for Insha near their office, so that she and her younger brother Nafee would stay at Rajbagh, says Ali.
Like other Kashmiris, Nadir Ali along with some of his friends went to meet Insha in late 2017. At her house, he saw that people had given her certificates. Ali says he felt an attempt had not been made to provide her education so that she could sustain herself. Two weeks later, Ali received a call from Insha that she intends to study. Now there was a real problem for Ali. Where could he take her to study Braille? Ali says he went to the Delhi Public School in Srinagar as they had a department to teach Braille. But the obstacle was money. Ali says then Ragu Raman stepped in and paid Insha’s admission fee and her rent at the Rajbagh area. “That solved our financial concern. But the real challenge was how to educate her,” he says. Initially, she would always cry and get angry. “She is torn by taunts of people who tell her she has got benefits from the government. Sometimes she says she is tired,” Ali says. Ali says the government had promised her a gas agency but it hasn’t been sanctioned so far.
Shariqa Zargar, an employee at the CPJ, became her friend as Insha would regularly come to the CPJ to study. Shariqa, a law graduate, belongs to the old city of Srinagar. She joined the CPJ in 2018. One day Insha came to the CPJ office with her brother. “It was perhaps her first day at the CPJ. She had come for tuitions. I saw her and I became very emotional. And I hugged her. I wept,” says Shariqa.
Like Ali, Shariqa also says Insha proved to be a tough student. “She would all of a sudden throw books away and start shouting that she doesn’t want to study,” says Shariqa. Shariqa would, again and again, nudge her to study. Gradually, Insha started adapting to a new reality. “She finally accepted that she has to live in this darkness. And she realised this truth and it calmed her a bit,” says Shariqa.
Since 2018, Shariqa remains with her when Insha visits the CPJ. “Insha cooks herself. She welcomes the guests and she keeps her house very clean,” says Shariqa. At times, Shariqa asks her how she manages to keep her flat so clean. Insha would say she checks with her hands to ensure no speck of dust is left on the floor.
Shariqa says Ali then took her to the University of Kashmir, where the Iqbal Library is located. The students of the University saw her and recognised her. “But they didn’t come near us,” says Shariqa. “Whenever I take her for a walk, people recognise her, but they usually don’t come near her,” she adds. Shariqa remembers Insha’s habits. “She sleeps early. She is a quick learner and has a sharp memory.” “I want to do my graduation and qualify for the IAS exam. That’s when I will be able to work for the blind. There is no awareness about children with disabilities and there is no school except the DPS in Kashmir that teaches Braille,” she says.
Before the incident, Insha would stay at her home after coming from a local school at Sedow and complete her school homework till late. “When I was not blind my aim was to become a doctor. My favourite colour was navy blue and it still is,” she says. “I have a slight idea of the colour now, and navy blue is still my favourite colour,” she adds.
The day Insha passed her Class 12 examination; the BJP celebrated it calling it the “shining success of a pellet victim”. The party said Insha Mushtaq was blinded when Mehbooba Mufti was Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. But ironically they don’t realise that it was the PDP-BJP coalition government in 2016. Oblivion of this politics, Insha says she hates when people call her blind. When she goes for walks along with Shariqa in Srinagar, she says some people taunt her. “Some come to console me. Some are crude and call me blind. Some gossip about me. Some tell me that I have got benefits from the government,” she adds. “I can feel their sarcasm. How can people be so brute?” she asks. “If ever my eyesight returns, I want to see my parents once,” she says.
Naseer Ganai in Sedow, Shopian
