Использование дробовиков с картечью в Кашмире приводит к необратимой инвалидности и слепоте

Throughout history, states have used disablement as a means of punishment and political control. Medieval legal systems across continents prescribed blinding, amputation, mutilation of noses or ears, and other forms of bodily disfigurement for offences ranging from theft and rebellion to adultery and treason. Such punishments were public and spectacular. Their purpose was not merely to inflict pain but to permanently mark the body as a visible reminder of sovereign authority. A blinded rival could no longer rule; an amputated hand or mutilated face served as a lifelong testament to the power of the ruler. Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, argued that the emergence of the modern state transformed these practices. Sovereign power, he suggested, increasingly gave way to disciplinary power. Rather than relying primarily on spectacular bodily punishment, modern states governed through surveillance, institutions, regulation and the internalisation of discipline. Liberal constitutionalism appeared to mark a decisive break with the brutal corporal punishments of the past. The Right to maim Yet, as Jasbir K. Puar reasons in The Right to Maim, disablement has not disappeared as a technique of state power. It has instead assumed new forms. Modern states rarely sentence people to mutilation through judicial decree. Rather, permanent injury is produced through policing, occupation and warfare, often under the language of security, public order or “less-lethal” force. The objective is no longer the public spectacle of punishment but the production of debilitated bodies that survive, yet carry the consequences of state violence for the rest of their lives. As Puar puts it, modern states increasingly exercise not only the “right to kill” but also the “right to maim.” Referring to the Israeli Occupation Forces, she writes: “The might of Israel’s military — one of the most powerful in the world — is built upon the claim of an unchanging ontological vulnerability and precarity, driven by history, geopolitics, and geography. Alongside the ‘right to kill,’ I noted a complementary logic long present in Israeli tactical calculations of settler colonial rule — that of creating injury and maintaining Palestinian populations as perpetually debilitated, and yet alive, in order to control them. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have shown a demonstrable pattern over decades of sparing life, of shooting to maim rather than to kill…” In 2017, long before October 7, 2023 happened and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, Puar argued: “Shooting to maim in order not to kill might appear as minor relief given the proclivity to shoot to kill…. But oscillations between the right to kill and the right to maim are hardly haphazard or arbitrary…. Both are part of the deliberate debilitation of a population — whether through the sovereign right to kill or its covert attendant, the right to maim — and are key elements in the racializing biopolitical logic of security.” Gaza now has the highest concentration of child amputees anywhere in the world. Puar’s analysis extends beyond Palestine. It invites us to ask whether modern states increasingly rely not only on lethal force but also on the deliberate production of permanent injury as a technique of governance and control. Disability as an instrument of state power The use of disability as an instrument of state power therefore is neither new nor confined to one country. Imperialist wars have left generations living with disability. Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War caused birth defects and disabilities across generations, while landmines in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan and Angola have left hundreds of thousands of civilians with amputations and lifelong impairments long after conflicts ended. These and other experiences ultimately led to international efforts culminating in the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, reflecting the recognition that weapons whose foreseeable consequence is the mass production of disability are fundamentally incompatible with humanitarian principles. It is another matter that many major countries including India are yet to either sign or ratify it. What is particularly disturbing today, however, is the emergence of policing and security practices in which permanent disablement is not merely collateral damage but an accepted, and at times apparently intended, outcome of state action. During the Great March of Return in Gaza, thousands of protesters suffered devastating limb injuries, amputations and permanent disabilities after being shot by Israeli forces, a pattern that continued during the recent genocide there. Disablement : An acceptable punishment In India, pellet-firing shotguns in Kashmir have left thousands blind, while Uttar Pradesh’s “Operation Langda” has normalised the shooting of suspects in the legs, resulting in thousands getting disabled. According to the Uttar Pradesh Police, there have been 14,973 encounters, in which 238 alleged criminals were killed and 9,467 shot in the leg since 2017. Although these contexts differ politically and legally, they reveal a disturbing convergence: disability is increasingly treated as an acceptable means of punishment, deterrence and social control. Unfortunately, this finds acceptance even among sections of the judiciary. Recently, Justice R Nataraj of the Karnataka High Court is reported to have remarked that chopping off hands or legs might be the only way to make people obey the law. Use of disabling weapons It is against this backdrop that the events of July 20 acquire profound significance. They compel us to confront a question that has remained largely absent from public debate despite India’s experience with pellet guns: what does it mean when the State uses weapons whose foreseeable consequence is the creation of permanent disability? The National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD), in a statement endorsed by more than 447 disability rights organisations, activists, public health experts and academics, unequivocally condemned the reported use of pellet guns and electric shock batons. Its intervention is significant because it shifts the debate beyond excessive force and civil liberties and seeks to bring in the disability rights issue. India’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), to which India is a State Party, recognise disability as a question of rights, equality and dignity. They require governments to remove barriers, combat discrimination and promote the full participation of persons with disabilities besides an obligation to prevent disabilities. State : An active producer of disability The deployment of pellet guns exposes a profound contradiction at the heart of these commitments. Instead of dismantling the barriers that disable people, the state becomes an active producer of disability. Every pellet-induced blindness, shattered retina, irreversible facial injury or neurological impairment is not simply an unfortunate consequence of crowd control. It is the foreseeable result of deploying a weapon whose effects have been documented for over a decade. Unlike accidental injuries, these impairments arise from the conscious decision to use a weapon known to carry a substantial risk of causing permanent disability. Public policy has attempted to prevent avoidable disability through vaccination, workplace safety, road safety and public health. Pellet guns represent the opposite principle. Here, the state knowingly employs a weapon whose defining characteristic is its capacity to inflict irreversible impairment. The question is therefore no longer whether excessive force was used on a particular day in Delhi. It is whether a constitutional democracy committed to equality, dignity and inclusion can legitimately retain methods of policing whose foreseeable consequence is the creation of disability. A constitutional contradiction The contradiction becomes even starker when viewed through the Constitution. Article 21 guarantees not merely the right to life but the right to live with dignity. Articles 14 and 19 protect equality before the law and the freedoms of speech, expression and peaceful assembly. These guarantees are not suspended because citizens choose to protest. While the State has both the authority and the responsibility to maintain public order, constitutional governance demands that any use of force satisfy the tests of legality, necessity and proportionality. Force must always be the least harmful means available. Weapons whose foreseeable consequence is permanent blindness or lifelong disability sit uneasily within this constitutional framework. The contradiction extends beyond domestic law. By ratifying the UNCRPD, India undertook to promote dignity, equality and inclusion for disabled persons. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 embodies these commitments. Yet these promises ring hollow if the same state retains and deploys weapons whose predictable outcome is the creation of new disabilities. This is not simply a policy inconsistency. It is a constitutional contradiction. Lessons we refuse to learn India’s encounter with pellet-firing shotguns began after the 2010 protests in the Kashmir valley. Introduced as a supposedly “non-lethal” alternative to live ammunition, they were presented as a more humane method of crowd control. Notwithstanding its tragically adverse consequences and calls for a ban they were repeatedly used. Hospitals across the Valley soon documented hundreds of devastating ocular injuries. Ophthalmologists at Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar recorded ruptured eyeballs, retinal detachments, optic nerve damage and shattered corneas on a scale rarely seen in modern ophthalmic practice. Many victims underwent repeated surgeries. The then J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti in January 2018, stated in the state assembly that 6,221 people had been injured by pellet guns in Kashmir between July 8, 2016, and February 27, 2017. Of these, 728 had eye injuries and 54 people suffered some form of visual impairment due to pellet injuries. Behind every statistic on pellet gun injuries lies a life irreversibly altered. In July 2016, fourteen-year-old Insha Mushtaq from Shopian looked out of the window of her home as protests unfolded outside. A volley of pellets shattered the glass and struck both her eyes, leaving her permanently blind. A bright student who dreamt of becoming a doctor, Insha was suddenly forced to abandon school, relearn daily activities through Braille and constant assistance, and reconcile herself to a future she never chose. After ten long years of wait Insha Mushtaq recently was awarded a compensation of Rs. 41.16 lakh. Pellets don’t discriminate Unlike a conventional bullet, a pellet cartridge releases hundreds of metal projectiles that scatter unpredictably over a wide area. Once fired, neither the shooter nor the commanding officer can determine which pellets will strike which person or which part of the body. The weapon cannot distinguish between a protester and a passer-by, between an adult and a child, or between a shoulder and an eye. Mustaq was one of them. Eighteen-month old Hiba Nissar’s story is different. On November 23, 2018, she was inside her home in Kapran in Kashmir’s Shopian district. According to a report in the Newsclick “The child was in her mother’s arms when a cloud of tear gas, meant to disperse protestors on the street, filled up their home, making unbearable for them to stay indoors. Her mother, Marsala, 32, tried to take her child out but had barely opened the door when a soldier fired pellets towards them, causing injury to the right eye of Hiba. The pellet had perforated her eye and gone deep inside, to parts critical for vision.” Her mother later said she wished the pellets had struck her instead, wondering how her daughter would live with a disability for the rest of her life. Sahil Lochab, who was among the five reported injured with pellets in the crackdown in Delhi faces possible permanent damage to his eyesight. “I want justice. Whoever did this to me doesn’t deserve to be in power,” he said. Nootan Toppo, who was hit on her right ear, complains of hearing impairment. Their stories expose the fiction that pellet guns are “non-lethal” or “safe” crowd-control weapons. They do not merely disperse crowds; they permanently transform lives, often of those who are neither participating in protests nor posing any threat. Why have they ruined my future? The consequences extend far beyond the impairment. Danish Rajab, who lost one eye and retained only minimal sight in the other after nearly a hundred pellets became embedded in his face and head, withdrew from social life, his education and career abruptly cut short. Fail Firdausi, another young victim, spoke not only of losing his eyesight but of losing his future, asking poignantly, “Why have they ruined my career, my future?” The blindness witnessed in Kashmir was therefore not accidental. It was the foreseeable consequence of deploying an indiscriminate weapon. For those injured, the consequences extended far beyond the operation theatre. Permanent visual impairment often meant interrupted education, loss of employment, lifelong dependence on rehabilitation and assistive technologies, psychological trauma, and profound economic hardship for families. An injury sustained in a moment became a disability carried for life, compelling one to relearn, cope and adjust to the new realities. This is why disability rights organisations view pellet guns differently from many civil liberties groups. Their concern is not confined to the violence of the encounter itself but to the enduring barriers that follow. Every person blinded by pellets enters another struggle — for accessible education, employment, mobility and social inclusion. The warnings the NPRD sounded when they were first used in Kashmir assume renewed urgency today. The myth of ‘less-lethal’ weapons The official defence of pellet guns rests on describing them as ‘less-lethal’ or ‘non-lethal.’ The terminology is deeply misleading. No weapon becomes humane simply because it kills fewer people. International policing experts increasingly avoid the expression “non-lethal” because such weapons can and do cause death. More importantly, they inflict blindness, traumatic brain injury, paralysis and other permanent impairments that fundamentally alter the course of a person’s life. From a disability rights perspective, this distinction is critical. A constitutional democracy cannot evaluate police weapons solely by asking whether they reduce fatalities. It must also ask whether they produce avoidable disability. If a weapon routinely leaves people blind or permanently impaired, comparing its mortality rate with that of conventional firearms misses the central issue. The question is therefore not whether pellet guns kill fewer people than bullets. It is whether the State should employ weapons whose foreseeable consequence is lifelong disability. The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms require that force satisfy the standards of legality, necessity and proportionality while minimising injury and preserving life. Building on these principles, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in its 2020 Guidance on Less-Lethal Weapons in Law Enforcement, was explicit: “Multiple projectiles fired at the same time are inaccurate and, in general, their use cannot comply with the principles of necessity and proportionality. Metal pellets, such as those fired from shotguns, should never be used”. Incompatibility with democratic policing The question is no longer simply whether excessive force was used on July 20, 2026 on protesters in New Delhi. It is whether a constitutional democracy committed to equality and inclusion can continue to justify weapons whose defining characteristic is their capacity to create disability. Every time a pellet gun is fired into a crowd, it carries the possibility of creating another Insha Mushtaq, another Hiba Nisar, another child whose education is interrupted, another young person whose future is irrevocably altered. A society committed to the dignity, equality and rights of persons with disabilities cannot accept a weapon whose predictable consequence is the manufacture of disability. The demand to prohibit pellet guns is therefore not merely a question of police reform or crowd control; it is a disability rights imperative, a constitutional obligation, and a test of our collective commitment to human dignity. During the hearing of a petition seeking a ban on pellets in the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Surya Kant suggested that, instead of seeking an outright prohibition on pellet guns, the petitioners should consider asking the Court to frame a protocol governing their use. “In light of the alleged excessive use… your prayer should be that the Court lays down a protocol regarding the use,” he observed. We beg to ask: Can a weapon whose foreseeable and documented consequence is lifelong disability ever be rendered acceptable through procedural safeguards alone? As has been argued above, the issue is not merely one of excessive or disproportionate use but of the very nature of the weapon itself. Pellet shotguns disperse hundreds of pellets, in most cases metallic, indiscriminately over a wide area, making permanent disability an inherent risk rather than an accidental consequence of misuse. No protocol can eliminate this intrinsic characteristic. A rights-based approach requires recognising that weapons designed in a manner that predictably produce lifelong disability have no place in civilian law enforcement. Subscribe to Our Newsletter Get the latest CounterCurrents updates delivered straight to your inbox. Muralidharan is general secretary, National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD).