By our correspondent in Srinagar

The wards of Srinagar hospitals have been seeing a lot of wounded over the last couple of months. Casualties are admitted on a daily basis - most of them young and with firearm wounds usually on the upper body. The police here answer stones with live ammunition and aim for the chest or head.

Dr Murtaza is a young serious-faced surgeon in charge of the Intensive Care Unit at the Sheri Kashmir Institute of Medical Science who talks to me over the distressing sight of two patients lying in a coma, hooked up to ventilators and life support machines.

They are from different districts but their stories are similar. Both men were poor day-labourers. They were coming home from the fields, alone and unarmed and were shot by either the police or the CRPF - the Central Reserve Police Force who are such a pervasive presence in the Valley.

No hope
Dozens of people have been killed in recent weeks during ongoing protests against the Indian government. “They’re young men who have no hope of a job or a decent living”, Indian journalist Rahul Behdi told RNW. “Most people are against Delhi rule anyway so tensions flare very easily in this region”.

In all, there are some 600,000 military and police troops in the Kashmir valley which has a population of 4 million. Kashmiris wonder who all this force is against. Militancy has declined since the 1990’s.  Human rights activist Khurram Pervez says: “If the government itself acknowledges there are just 1000 militants active in Kashmir, why do we have 600,000 troops here?  All these soldiers are here to control the lives of the ordinary people, not just fight armed militants.”

The people in Kashmir lost faith in India’s government a long time ago, says Rahul Behdi. “The reaction from Delhi to this fresh unrest has been one of panic and inactivity. They just don’t know how to deal with it. The young chief minister who’s responsible for this region is incapable of the job and he doesn’t seem to be very effective”.

Pakistan
"Guns have been replaced by stones," says a young local journalist, "and of course, we're getting our stones from Pakistan" he adds ironically.

The Kashmir region spans parts of India and neighbouring Pakistan. Both countries have been fighting over control of the region for decades, which has lead to several armed conflicts. “The Pakistanis are looking at this with glee”, says Mr Behdi. “They say it proves that the Kashmiri in India don’t want to belong to that country, but to Pakistan. This may lead to even more widespread protests”.
 

'Nothing to lose'
The protest movement here has taken on a different tone from the bloody sectarian days of the 1990s. The rage is being replaced by a "nothing-more-to- lose" attitude. Boys stride towards the heavily-armed security personnel tearing open their shirts and asking them to shoot. The effect has been a more muted response from the police.

“This is a police state.” The statement comes not from a human rights activist, but from a senior police officer who declines to be named.  “I’ll admit it. And we feel let down by our government – this is a situation that needs a political solution – and instead they’re leaving it to the police to take care of.”

But he’s diffident about acknowledging the brutality that Kashmiris are saying has been perpetrated by the police force on demonstrators.

“We try to have a “graded response” he says.  “We first disperse a crowd by loudspeakers but that of course will only work with peaceful demonstrators, not with stone pelters.”

Shot in the neck
But then how do you account for Raishma, a frail little thing of 11 with a neck brace so large it keeps slipping up over her face and she has to adjust it back down again so she can breathe.  She was shot in the neck as she stood by the window of her house.

Her doctor says she was lucky - another millimeter and it would have hit her spine and she’d be a quadriplegic. But I wonder if her father Sikander, standing silently by her bed thinks she was lucky.  He’s a day labourer.  The medical costs will put him and his whole family in debt for years. 

Tear gas shells
I have been hearing of injuries from tear gas shells and I ask the senior police officer why these are being fired into the crowd instead of above their heads.  He tells me that tear gas shells don’t work that way – they don’t hurt people until they burst and then the fallout of the hot metal “can pierce the skin and cause injury.” I must have looked sceptical because he invites me to a demonstration where I could shoot one at him. 

“You should have taken him up on the dare”, says Dr Murtaza at the hospital as he stands over his coma patients in the ICU. This man was shot in the head with a tear gas shell and it's a high velocity projectile – it pierced his skull and caused a severe brain injury.  “I don’t think your police officer would have let you shoot at him.”