Behind his thick glasses, 25-year-old Inam Ahmad’s eyes move with a strained flicker, a visible reminder of the permanent damage inflicted by pellet guns in Indian-administered Kashmir.
“My life is not only dark. I live with the pain every day as the pellets in my skull move or heat up,” says Ahmad, who lost 80 percent of his eyesight in 2017 at the age of just 16 when pellets fired by Indian armed forces pierced his skin and lodged inside his head, behind his eyes.
"They cause me immense physical pain and remind me that I will never be normal again," he says, describing the scores of pellets that continue to be stuck in his skull and neck.
Fahmeeda Jan, Ahmad’s mother, holds a photograph of Ahmad from when he was a toddler. She says he was full of life before he was hit by the pellets. The photograph shows a three-year-old boy in a green tracksuit, clinging to his younger sister's hand, his eyes looking upwards.
“After repeated surgeries, crushing financial costs and a lost education, this incident has uprooted our lives. He gets so fed up that he pulls his hair in frustration, becomes aggressive, and wants to end his life,” Jan says.
