Jammu and Kashmir: Woman and her yet to be born killed in encounter

On Friday evening, five months pregnant Firdosa was doing dishes in her courtyard at Shadimarg, a dusty village tucked away in apple orchards, some 45 Kilometres south of Srinagar, when militants attacked a nearby army camp. The vigilant soldiers manning the bunkers of the facility immediately retaliated by firing a fusillade of bullets. During the exchange of gun-fire that lasted for more than 20 minutes, a bullet grazed Firdosa’s throat. She let out a howl of pain and fell unconscious with blood gushing out of her wound. Amid the rat-a-tat of guns, her husband Khursheed Ahmad Shiekh, putting his life on the line, dragged Firdosa inside the house.

" We waited for firing to stop and in the meantime asked for help from a nearby police station but they did not show up even after 30 minutes" said Sheikh, adding that with every passing moment his wife and unborn child were drawing closer to death.

As police did not come to his help, Sheikh along with some locals put his bleeding and motionless wife into a three- wheeler carrier and rushed to a nearby medical facility.
" Around 15 minutes later we reached Rajpora hospital from where doctors referred her to district hospital, Pulwama. Merely a few minutes later after we reached the hospital, doctors declared her as brought dead" Sheikh said with misty eyes.

All along the way Sheikh was praying hard for his wife’s well being but little did he know that she had died seconds after she was hit.

"I was actually ferrying a dead body to hospital. She had died instantly" Sheikh said.

Belonging to a socially disadvantaged group, Sheikh, a sales man by profession had shifted along with his wife and two children Aalima (6) and Tauqeer(9) to another village as the army camp and their house are separated by a mere wall. The  frequent militant attacks on the camp had always made them vulnerable to stray bullets. But army men, according to sheikh, did not allow them to settle there.

" They suspected us of being  the sympathisers of militants and threatened us of dire consequences if we would not come and live here again " Sheikh said.

After Sheikh interred his wife in his ancestral graveyard, he locked his house and along with his children went straight to his father's place in nearby Yaar village.

Flocked by many mourners, Sheikh still finds it hard to believe that he has lost both his loving wife and yet-to-be-born child.