Case filed in NHRC against the 18 month old Hiba Nisar, Kashmir’s youngest pellet victim

Srinagar: Noted Human Rights Defenders Syed Mujtaba Hussian and Mirza Jahanzeb Beg have filed case in National Human Rights Commission against the 18 month old pellet victim. The Activists have also written to other International Child Rights Institutions, Special Rapporteurs to United Nations and Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. According to the report, Eighteen-month-old Hiba Nisar was with her mother inside their house at Kapran village of south Kashmir’s District when pellets hit the infant in her right eye. According to victim’s mother Fancy, they were forced to leave the home due to suffocation caused by Tear Gas shells fired by the forces. When she was on her door, forces fired pellets on them. Fancy covered Hiba’s face with her hand but couldn’t save her from the pellets. She too received pellets on her left hand while making an unsuccessful attempt to protect her infant daughter.
The petitioners Syed Mujtaba and Mirza Jahanzeb Beg while briefing the media stated that the baby victim became the youngest victim of oppression. Pellet guns are used nowhere on civilian population in this world except Kashmir. On one hand the Government is claiming to protect the girl child under the schemes like ‘Beti bachao Beti padao’ but on the other hand there are more than 50 girl pellet victim since 2016, the recent being 18 month old Hiba Nisar. Expressing a deep sense of loss for the continuing theatre of killings, pellet injuries and atrocities on civilians.
Various International Conventions, Domestic laws and Welfare schemes are on papers for the protection of Human Rights but unfortunately, the reality on ground is different, petitioners said.
‘The commission should take Action Taken Report and an independent investigation be initiated against the authorities involved and a compensation of Rs 10 lakhs be granted to the child victim on an immediate basis and the State Government may be directed to bear all the medical expenses of the child victim’, the activists said in their petition.