‘I heard gunshots... then saw two cops in pool of blood’

Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, February 6

Hope and despair continue to be an inalienable part of one of Kashmir’s premier hospitals — Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital — where militants today staged a daring attack on a police escort party inside the busy Out-Patients Department to free an undertrial Pakistani militant who had been brought there for a check-up.

As I cover the health beat, I had gone to SMHS Hospital to meet a source for a story. As he hadn’t yet turned up, I decided to take a look at the OPD. On way to the OPD, I stopped by to click pictures of the empty Ward 8 of the ophthalmology department, where during the 2016 unrest, beds were added to accommodate the youth with pellet injuries in their eyes.

In the jam-packed OPD, hundreds of gloomy faces stood in queues, waiting to meet doctors. At 11.38 am, I heard gunshots, something similar to what I had witnessed on August 5, 2016, when security forces had resorted to teargas shelling inside SMHS Hospital to foil the funeral procession of a slain youth.

As a reflex, I ran for safety. Amid the confusion, I ran towards the inner wards, thinking the firing had taken place outside the hospital. After around a minute, when I returned, I was shocked to see two policemen lying in a pool of blood. I could see blood oozing from the gunshot wounds on their bodies.

The sight of blood was gut-wrenching. I was trembling seeing the two policemen struggling for life on the floor of the hospital. Gathering my wits, I realised that the wounded needed help. I along with a policeman and a few civilians picked up Mushtaq, the older policeman, and rushed him to the operation theatre.

The alert doctors and other health professionals were ready at the operation theatre to receive the injured policemen. I thought Mushtaq would survive because he was at Kashmir’s best trauma centre.

After a minute, another injured policeman, Babar Ahmad Khan, was brought to the operation theatre. Despite being young, Babar had lost the battle before he could be resuscitated.

Three minutes after Mushtaq was taken into the operation theatre, a lady doctor told the anxious crowd waiting outside: “He (Mushtaq) has died. The other is critical.”

Often it happens that the death of the injured in violence is attributed to the delay in getting them to hospital. Today, however, I witnessed death chasing a human being despite being in the best of hands in the golden hour. A doctor, who operated upon Mushtaq, later told me that the bullet had pierced his heart.