Kids here are scarred for life by Pak shells

Kids here are scarred for life by Pak shells
PRADEEP DUTTA

JAMMU, JANUARY 23: While a year-and-a-half-old baby is crying for milk back home, another is writhing in pain at the Government Medical College Hospital, Bakshi Nagar. Their mother, Bina Devi, cannot attend to either of them as she is undergoing operation after a splinter from a killer shell from across the border pierced through her abdomen today at Palanwala.

Ghar jana hai, ghar jana hai (I have to go home), maa ko bulao (call mother), are the words five-year-old Baby, one of the victims of the shelling, keeps repeating. Her father's assurances fail to comfort the little girl and the only pause in her constant crying comes when, unable to bear pain, she gasps for breath and then starts all over again.

``I don't know how to handle the situation. My infant daughter has been crying since morning for milk and she (Baby) is insisting on going home with her mother," says the father, Kuldip Raj, a constable in the CRPF, posted at Bantalab Group Centre.

"And I am standing helpless, not having the guts to tellher that her mother's condition is serious and even she (Baby) may soon be taken to the operation theatre,'' he adds. Baby's left arm is badly mangled. Doctors have applied first-aid and are preparing for surgery, which is taking more time because of the lack of staff following the ongoing strike of the state government employees.

After every 15 minutes, the senior doctor on duty comes and asks the injured girl to try to move her fingers. And, when after repeated painful efforts she fails, the victim cries, ``tang nahin karo, kah diya na nahin hilti hain'' (don't disturb me, how many times I tell you I can't move my fingers). These words are too much for Kuldip Raj to take and he runs from the emergency room as the possibility of his daughter's arm being amputated hits him. ``Who will marry her,'' Kuldip Raj weeps.

Regarding the incident, a youth who had brought the woman and her children to hospital said that the shelling had been going on through the night. When it stopped for a little period of timein the morning, Bina Devi immediately picked up her infant daughter and ran along with Baby to board a bus for Jammu. In the meantime, a shell landed nearby, injuring all of them.

``It was after thirty minutes or so, when the shelling stopped once again, that I managed to get up and saw that there were three persons lying in a pool of blood. "

"The infant was crying nearby. Somehow, I picked them up and brought them tohospital,'' he said.