Out on street for friend,10-yr-old fights for life

On bed number 8 of 6A ward in Sher-I-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS),10-year-old Reshma is recovering from a life-threatening wound....

On bed number 8 of 6A ward in Sher-I-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS),10-year-old Reshma is recovering from a life-threatening wound. The girl suffered a bullet injury in her neck on August 1 as she participated in a protest on the streets of Pampore.

A Class II student,Reshmas story is different from scores of others,recovering from injuries sustained during protests across the Valley. She doesnt belong to Kashmir,but Rajasthan. She was participating in the protest only to show solidarity with her Kashmiri friend Zainab.

I was out with my friend Zainab, the girl says,smiling. We were shouting slogans. Police opened fire and we ran. A bullet hit me from the behind.

Two teenagers were killed and more than five wounded when police and CRPF opened fire on the protesters at Pampore on the Srinagar-Jammu national highway.

Daughter of a scrap dealer,Mohammad Sikander,Reshma is from Eidgah in Rajasthan. Sikander and his family wife and two kids have been in Kashmir for the past few years. Sikander had admitted Reshma,his eldest child,in a local government school.

Sikander,who has a hand-to-mouth existence,says it has been a tough time for the family,with him attending Reshma at the hospital,I am not able to earn anything.

My wife was also here for the first seven days. But I have sent them back to Pampore because she is nursing a month-old baby, he says. When Reshma was wounded,her sister was only 20 days old.

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I have spent all that I had saved in the past few months, he says. But now some people are coming forward to help me. They are paying for the medicines for my daughter.