LoC shelling: Injured 11-yr-old unaware she has lost her family

Dinesh Manhotra 

Tribune News Service 

Jammu, March 18 

Battling for life at the emergency ward of Government Medical College and Hospital (GMC), Jammu, 11-year-old Nasreen Kousar is unaware that she has lost her parents and three bothers in shelling from across the border. 

She herself was critically injured in the incident but was more concerned about her brothers, who are no more, and her younger sister Mahreen Kousar (5), who was in an operation theatre in the same hospital where doctors were busy in removing a splinter from her liver. 

“After repeated intervals, Nasreen was asking about her family members,” Nadeem Khan, a political activist of Mendhar, who was attending the injured girl, told The Tribune. 

“Although she has gained consciousness, we have not informed her about the tragedy that has struck her family yet. The poor girl is under the impression that her family members are being treated at a Rajouri hospital and only her younger sister is admitted at the GMC.”

The fear-stricken girl was in severe pain but was trying to narrate the shelling incident in Pahari dialect to Khan and a couple of youth who rushed to the GMC to render help to the injured. 

Quoting Nasreen, Khan said the family was having breakfast when a shell, fired from across the border, exploded. Since morning, shelling was underway in the Sandote area of Balakote, which is far away from the family's Devta Sargloon village. “It appears that the Pakistani soldiers extended their shelling range and a shell fell inside the house of Choudhary Mohammad Ramzan,” he said, adding that all family members got injured and all of them were shifted to the Primary Health Centre (PHC) at Ghargloon of the Balakote area. Nasreen was shifted to the PHC on a bike as other family members were rushed in a car that was available in the village.

Five members of the family were declared dead while Nasreen and Mahreen were airlifted to Jammu from Rajouri.

Health Minister Bali Bhagat, who visited the hospital, said the next 48 hours were very crucial for Mahreen as the splinter of the shell had badly hit her liver.