Infant was asleep with mother when Pak bullet took his life

Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 22

An eight-month-old was killed when a bullet fired by Pakistan hit him around 10.30 pm on Sunday in Saire Palai village of the Khour subdivision in Jammu district.

Nitin Sharma, son of Gopal Dass, was sleeping beside his mother when he was hit by the bullet.

“At 10.30 pm on Sunday, a bullet fired from across the border hit Nitin when he was sleeping beside his mother Nishu Devi on the verandah of their house. The infant suddenly started crying and his clothes were drenched in blood,” said Sumit Kumar, Nitin’s cousin, on the phone from Saire Palai village.

He said: “Due to the bad condition of roads and non-availability of an ambulance, we reached the nearby hospital around 3 am, but, unfortunately, by that time Nitin had died.”

Nishu Devi is inconsolable since Monday night, he added.

“What enmity did Pakistan have with the eight-month-old infant?” asked Sumit. He said intermittent firing was going on in the area for the last one week. Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM), Khour, Devinder Bhagat said a bullet had pierced through the body of an infant and he had died of excessive bleeding. The SDM said the firing from across the border was a routine affair in Saire Palai village on the Line of Control in the Palanwalla sector of Khour. “We are waiting for the post-mortem,” he said. Bhagat said the bullet which had pierced through the infant’s body was found on the verandah of the house where he was sleeping with his mother.

Although there is widespread condemnation over the infant’s killing, politicians and the authorities have not met the bereaved family yet.

Locals told The Tribune that only the Station House Officer of the Khour police station had met the family.

Local MLA Krishan Lal said: “I am in constant touch with the family and will visit the village on Wednesday.”

Box: ‘Ambulance could have saved baby’

Locals, who spoke to this reporter over the phone, said had there been an ambulance and better road connectivity, the infant could have been saved. They said firing from Pakistan in border villages of Pallanwala was a routine. They said Saire Palai, Jogwa, Battal, Harjani, Magaree, Bari, Takhar, Bardoh, Kalakhas and Mana villages, which had a population of nearly 10,000, had no telephone network.

Most of the villages are situated across the Manawar Tawi and only one bridge, constructed by the Army, connects the inaccessible villages with the rest of Jammu district.