Doctors protest firing of shells inside hospital

Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar July 10

The situation in Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital, where a bulk of critically injured people are being treated, turned tense when police personnel barged into the premises and fired tear smoke shells, one of which landed close to the operation theatre, eyewitnesses said today.

The hospital has been overwhelmed with injured people, most of them hit by bullets and pellets. The eyewitnesses, including doctors, patients and attendants, said the police personnel, headed by a DSP-rank officer, barged into the hospital on Saturday evening, broke doors and fired tear smoke shells. They said the police also detained at least two injured civilians who were hit by pellets and were undergoing treatment.

The Resident Doctors’ Association (RDA) of the associated hospitals of Government Medical College (GMC), Srinagar, protested against the “harassment of hospital staff and tear gas shelling in SMHS emergency ward.”

“Four lung disease patients were being managed in the emergency room when teargas shells were fired inside the emergency which caused severe suffocation to them,” RDA president Dr Adil Ashraf said in a statement issued here.

“We received calls from many doctors that the ambulances were not allowed by security forces at certain places,” he said.

Similar incidents were witnessed in other periphery hospitals of Kashmir.

Eyewitnesses said the security forces dragged out an injured youth of Shopian district from a Pampore hospital.

They said the forces smashed windowpanes of ambulances and beat up attendants. “Several shots were fired on the premises of the hospital,” said a doctor at the Pampore hospital.

SP Manoj Pandita, who is also police spokesperson, said, “We will look into it.”