Pellet guns with deflectors safe for eyes, fault lies with protesters who bend like bowlers: CRPF

Amid tall claims that deflector-fitted pellet guns won’t target eyes of protesters, paramilitary CRPF Wednesday asserted that they tested the new gadget on a static target and that the fault lies on protesters as they “bend like bowlers.” The CRPF also advocated lessons for the stone pelters to ensure they are not hit in eyes during protests.
According to figures available with the SMHS hospital, since Hizbul Mujahideen commander Sabzar Bhat and his aide Faizan Muzaffar were killed in an encounter in Tral Saturday last, 34 youth with pellet injuries were admitted in the hospital. “Ten of them were shot in their eyes,” hospital sources said. “Rest were hit in various body parts including chest, belly, thighs and legs. None was hit in feet.”
The CRPF, which received a consignment of deflectors, with an aim to ensure pellet injury to eyes is reduced, claims that they tried the pellet gun fitted with a deflector on a static target and that situation on ground is totally different. “We can’t say deflectors have failed. The fault is from the stone pelters side as they bend like bowlers as if clashes are a cricket match,” CRPF spokesman in Srinagar, Rajesh Yadav, told Kashmir Post.
He said stone pelters need to get lessons on how they could save themselves from being getting hit in their eyes during clashes. “Directions have already been passed to our men to target legs and foot of protesters. We have observed majority of boys come with stones in their hands as if they are playing a cricket match. They bend like bowlers,” Yadav said. He said that the pellets fired at the protesters many a times hit the road and then split left, right and centre. “It’s not hundred per cent possible that pellets won’t hit eyes of protestors though our men target feet and legs of protesters,” he said.
Asked whether the very motive of deflectors in the pump action guns is falling apart, Yadav said that “stone pelters need some counseling as well.”
A senior CRPF official said that the ground situation is totally different then what is presumed. “All protesters are not of same height and physique. Whenever a tear gas is fired, many protesters fall down and when we fire pellets, it is bound to hit them in eyes,” he said. “We are keeping pellets as our last resort and hope situation remains calm in the months ahead.”
A pellet gun or pump action gun normally fires a single cartridge that spits out as many as 400 small pellets, which don’t follow a definite path. Pellets penetrate the body’s soft tissues. Eyes are the most vulnerable to damage as they are delicate. A pellet causes multiple damages to all parts of the eye.
The deflector, which is an aluminum shield fitted on the upper side of the muzzle, was aimed to ensure that lesser velocity pellets hit protesters only on the lower parts of the body, not vulnerable area of abdomen and above.
As many 14 people were killed due to pellet ammunition and more than 7500 others, mostly youths, suffered injuries, 1100 of them in eyes, since July last year when the Valley erupted over the killing of Hizb commander Burhan Wani. During the recently held Trauma Congress at the Government Medical College, doctors said that during four months of 2016 alone, 500 victims with abdominal trauma were treated at the hospital—85 with bullet and 349 with pellet injuries.
The Souvenir of the Conference, which included an abstract of papers in the Congress, said that 1028 pellet injuries were treated by the Department of Ophthalmology since July 2016.
Over 65 youth were declared legally blind, doctors at the SKIMS said, among them 15-year-old Insha Mushtaq of Sedow, Shopian, who was fired with a full burst of pellets in her face by police.
There was a massive outcry from various quarters, calling for a ban on pellet guns, but the Union Home Minister during his visit to Srinagar had asserted that pellet guns would be used as a last option.