Written by Freny Manecksha
After eight months of lying paralyzed in bed, on March 25 this year, 35-year-old
Hanifa Wani died at her parental home in Kreeri, Baramulla. A single mother, she begged her sister-in-law during her last painful breaths to take good care of her 11-year-old daughter Humaira. She, herself, would not live to keep her promise.
A picture taken with cellular phone shows Hanifa a few days before she died on March 25, 2011.
Hanifa was among the 2000 odd people estimated to have suffered injuries at the hands of government forces last summer. Significantly, the injuries she received were above the waist and on her back. According to hospital reports she sustained five bullet injuries that affected her lung, her kidney and, most seriously, her spinal cord leaving her paraplegic.
The people of the picturesque village of Kreeri, which gets its name from a particular thorny bush, are largely dependent on the produce of orchards and small floricultural plots. Last year this seemingly tranquil village, like many others in Baramulla, was severely affected during the summer of discontent. Angry protesters spilled out on the streets and were confronted by the government forces.
Kreeri’s local population was particularly outraged by the disappearance of teenager Farukh Bukhari on July 28 after the police rounded up some youths during a march. (Farukh’s body was later found dumped outside Choura police station with a mutilated face. His body had torture marks.)
Two days after his disappearance, there were huge protests in the area. Some reports in the media speak of Hanifa being one of the protester. But the family insists that she stepped out of her house during a strict curfew – not as a protester but because of the compulsions of motherhood.
In the house of her mother Raja Begum, and in the presence of her brothers Abdullah and Sunaullah Wani, her nephew Ishfaq Wani recounts the events of July 31. “Hanifa’s daughter, Humaira, was suffering from typhoid and had high fever. Hanifa wanted to take her to the Kreeri district hospital which is just a short distance away,” recalls Ishfaq. “It was calm that morning. There were no protests going on when she stepped out around 9 am,” he says.
Half an hour later the family received an alarming phone call. The caller said that Hanifa was in the hospital, and that she was dead. The news turned out to be incorrect, but Hanifa indeed came close to death.
What happened during those crucial moments when she stepped out of the house up until the time when she was shot at near the family’s hardware shop in the chowk? Ishfaq has pieced together the sequence of events from Hanifa’s own account and from that of her daughter and local people. (A fuse box on the pole in the area still bears bullet marks).
Hanifa was first confronted by three CRPF men who gave her the permission to proceed when she explained why she needed to go to the hospital. A little while later she was stopped again, and even as she was pleading, two other troopers came charging down the small lane towards her and Humaira. Frightened, she turned back and began fleeing even as they opened fire and bullets hit her. The sound of gunshots brought some people onto the streets and in the melee two other youths also received injuries. According to bystanders, after Hanifa fell to the ground, the government forces dragged her body and attempted to chuck it into the small open drain that runs through the village chowk. Her face distinctly bore the marks of abrasion on her nose, they say.
Hanifa was taking her daughter Humaira, 11, to a local medical facility when they were shot at by troopers. (Picture: Izhar Ali)
By that time the crowds had swelled. Government forces retreated, allowing her to be taken to the hospital. Others brought her distraught daughter, who had also received a small injury, back to her home.
The district hospital provided an ambulance for her to be taken to Sher-I-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) Soura, Srinagar but the ordeal was not over yet. The ambulance was stopped near Pattan according to her brothers who had accompanied her. They were severely beaten by government forces before the ambulance was allowed to go. At SKIMS, Hanifa was rushed to the emergency ward and then shifted to neurosurgery department. The bullet that had lodged near the seventh dorsal vertebrae meant that she was paralysed for life. And since not much else could be done, the family brought her back to home after eight days.
“She regained consciousness two days after she came home. We saw her trying to speak and desperately trying to move her limbs,” recalls Ishfaq. “She kept asking what had happened to her. The days that followed were no better. She refused solid foods and survived only on liquids or intravenous fluids.”
Prolonged conflict in Kashmir has meant the crumbling away of whatever little infrastructure that existed. Expertise in medical facilities like Physiotherapy is rare especially in rural areas. There is no question of insurance cover for the kind of injury that Hanifa suffered. Many of her open wounds did not heal and she had to be taken at least twice a week to SKIMS for treatment in the ambulance provided by the district hospital. “We also had to pay for the diesel,” adds Ishfaq.
The family’s income had also suffered a serious blow because the injuries sustained by the brothers during the assault meant they were in no condition to work properly for several weeks.
The promise of assistance of Rs 50,000 for treatment of all injured by the state government did not materialize. Hanifa’s brother Abdullah Wani says he heard that Rs 3,000 would be sanctioned immediately but even that sum has not been disbursed. Meanwhile the family incurred large expenses in documenting and videographing the necessary evidence.
“
The only assistance we received was from the naib tehsildar who sanctioned Rs 5,000 from his own personal funds,” says Wani.
No member of the civic administration or the state government made a visit to their home. “Even the local MLA made a visit only after critical comments were made in the media about his absence. And after Hanifa’s death he did not come to condole even though he lives barely a kilometer away,” says Ishfaq.
Hanifa eventually died after agonizing seven months of suffering. Although her ordeal and death affected the entire family, it had its most severe effect on the two vulnerable female members of her family – her aged mother and her young daughter.
Although Hanifa's ordeal and death affected the entire family, it had its most severe effect on the two vulnerable female members – her aged mother and young daughter. (Picture: Izhar Ali)
Divorced after about a year and a half of her marriage, Hanifa left her husband in Sopore and returned to her parental home where Humaira was born. As a single mother she had sworn to be the chief provider for the fatherless girl. “We will give whatever we can to Humaira but how do we replace a mother’s love?” asks Ishfaq.
Raja Begum, her mother, frequently breaks into Kashmiri during Ishfaq’s narration and keeps gesturing with her hands. Ishfaq translates: “She has an older daughter who suffers from severe diabetes and kidney disorder and was reconciled to this daughter’s critical condition. But Hanifa’s tragedy has come as a real shock,” he says. “She never imagined that she would die first.”
From the window of their home Humaira sits solemnly in one corner of the garden as white, wispy blossoms of the poplar tree whirl and cartwheel in the spring air before they fall on the ground. She has slipped out of the room during our conversation and is reluctant to speak much. Ishfaq says she is a quiet girl and hardly interacts or plays with other children. Humaira, a young child, saw her mother fell to the bullets and later had to watch her reduced to a helpless invalid.
There is an acute paucity of professional counseling services that can address this trauma and other issues that haunt the family. What the family does cling to is solace provided by a tightly-knit community. “We have been given tremendous hamdardi (a sharing of pain),” emphasizes Ishfaq.
