In a small room, of a small house, in a small village in Kashmir, Hanifa Begum lies unmoving on her bed. The only signs of life are her eyes. They roam across the ceiling as she talks about how she became paralyzed and bed-bound. 

Story by Wasim Khalid

On 31 July last year, 35-year-old Begum joined other women to protest the disappearance of a local boy from Kreeri in north Kashmir's troubled Barramulla district. There was a rumor that the boy was being held by the police, and the women were trying to pressure officials to release news about him.

“While we were demonstrating, the police attacked us with canes and guns,” Begum says. “They shot me five times. They dragged me and beat me up. Two young boys rescued me.”

One of the bullets lodged in her spine. Hanifa Begum is now paraplegic, and relies on her young daughter for survival. “I curse myself for not meeting death that day, instead of living this tortuous life with my daughter.”

Counting the injured

Hanifa Begum is one of an estimated 2,500 people who were injured in clashes with police and paramilitary personnel in 2010. The Kashmiri Coalition of Civil Societies compiled the figures from newspaper reports and three hospitals in Kashmir, says the coalition’s coordinator Khuram Parvez.

“The injured are predominantly youths,” Parvez says. “More than five percent of the people who were hurt now have some kind of permanent disability.”

Parvez’s group says that at least 117 people were killed during the five months of unrest last summer. Official counts are lower. The government says 104 people were killed in that period of time, 894 people were injured, and 18 people suffered permanent disability. 

Reports of excessive force

Counting disputes aside, civil society groups say the majority of those injuries and death were caused by excessive force from the police.

“Disability is being manufactured in Kashmir,” says Farooq Ahmad. He is the chairman of the Help Poor Voluntary Trust, which provides medical and financial help to people who have been wounded in Kashmir’s ongoing political unrest. Ahmed says that most of the people who come to his organization for help were shot by police or paramilitary fighters. 

“Firearm injuries were found mainly above the waist, on the head and back,” Ahmad says. “People were hit by tear gas canisters, bullets, rubber rounds, pellets. Other people were flogged.” 

“Most of the people with permanent disabilities have spinal cord injuries or have lost their vision”, Ahmad says. One ophthalmologist at Srinagar’s SMHS hospital says last summer he treated 50 people for eye injuries from clashes with police. 

Psychological and financial stress

Ahmad said the disabilities are particularly traumatic for young people. “Imagine an 18 year old boy who loves soccer. How  would he feel to be confined to bed forever?”

Ahmad says that his organization found that more than 50 percent of the injured came from economically deprived households.

“So besides the physical stress and psychological trauma, it’s burdensome for their families to manage the expenses,” he says. “In absence of any official help, we have seen them sell their land, their property, anything with financial value.”

That is Hanifa Begum’s experience. A divorced mother with no sons, before the shooting she was living with her brother and barely getting by. She told this reporter that there was no money coming in to buy food and medication for her. Her young daughter and her neighbors help as much as they can.

When I last saw her, she was lying in her dimly lit room, gazing at the ceiling. 

“I am dead long ago,” she said to me as I was about to leave. ”It’s only my eyes which give me a feeling of being alive.”

Editor’s note: Hanifa Begum died before this story went to print.