Killing of class 7 student at Handwara brings back focus on use of pellet guns

Srinagar: Even as the killing police have launched massive investigations into the killing of class 7 student Owais’ Muhstaq Mir of Handwara in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district, the incident has brought back the focus on the use of pellet guns in Kashmir.
A fresh debate has been triggered by Owais’s killing whether the use of pellet guns stand justified and why pellet were used in Handwara where situation wasn’t that bad.
“The killing of young boy was unfortunate. We have registered a case and investigations have been taken up to find out the reason what led to the incident,” a top police officer said. He said it is being looked into whether there was a need to use pellets.
In September 2017, the human rights watchdog, Amnesty International demanded that the pellet-firing shotguns, which have been responsible for blinding, killing and traumatizing hundreds of people in occupied Kashmir, must be immediately banned.
In its report, titled “Losing Sight In Kashmir, The Impact of Pellet Guns”, the Director Amnesty International India, Aakar Patel had said that no amount of violence from the youth could legitimize the use of pellet guns.
He had stated that the Amnesty had raised the issue with the government of India, which understands that the damage caused by the pellets was disproportionate. Patel had pointed out that his organization was working in Kashmir for a long time, and since 1989, no case or FIR registered against the forces had been acted upon.
The Amnesty report had identified the cases of 88 people whose eyesight was damaged by metal pellets fired from pump-action shotguns used by the police and Central Reserve Police Force in the occupied territory between 2014 and 2017. Recently, fifty members of the EU Parliament had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding an end to use of pellet guns for crowd control and the repeal of laws like AFSPA and PSA in Jammu and Kashmir.