Says “It Is Still Not Too Late, Let There Be No Space for Selective Justice”
Srinagar, August 23: J&K Peoples Conference President and MLA Handwara Sajad Lone on Sunday launched an unsparing broadside against Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, questioning why Gandhi’s much-publicised concern over pellet gun injuries in Delhi was nowhere to be found during years of mass blindings and gruesome pellet violence in Kashmir that left thousands permanently disabled and hundreds robbed of their eyesight forever.
Lone while acknowledging Gandhi’s recent move to register an FIR over a pellet injury sustained in Delhi, he demanded to know why the same moral urgency had never been extended to the Valley.
“May I, with all the humility at my command, beg to ask why the same effort was not used when pellets were fired in Kashmir on many occasions,” Lone said pointedly, adding that the Delhi injury was, thankfully, minor.
The scale of that suffering, as Lone reminded the nation, is staggering and documented. Between 2016 and 2017, the then Jammu and Kashmir Government’s own records reported 6,221 people injured by pellet firing, including 782 with eye injuries.
“Hundreds lost their eyesight and were blinded for life, with permanent visual impairment. Thousands were disabled permanently because of gruesome injuries,”
Lone stated, refusing to let the numbers remain abstract. He went further back, recalling that when pellets were first unleashed on the Valley in 2010, dozens were blinded and hundreds injured, leaving behind what he described as severe and permanent disability that the country has chosen to forget.
Against this backdrop, Lone asked the question he said every Kashmiri has a right to ask. “Why was the same concern not shown for those Kashmiris who were blinded or grievously injured? Are Kashmiris less human than others in this country?” The words were measured, but the charge was devastating.
Rather than stopping at criticism, Lone extended what can only be described as a direct and public challenge to Gandhi. “It is still not too late. You can come here and talk about it and even try to register an FIR. This would at least put focus on those forgotten pellet victims,” he said, making clear that action, not sympathy, is what Kashmir’s blinded and broken demand.
Lone also trained his fire on the National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party, neither of which has escaped his reckoning. He noted that both parties held power and controlled the Home Department during the very periods when pellets tore through Kashmiri bodies, in 2010 and again in 2016.
“Till date there has not been even an apology from these two parties,” Lone said, and then delivered the political sting with precision both the NC and PDP are today constituent members of the INDIA alliance, the very platform Rahul Gandhi leads.
Anticipating pushback, Lone was careful to frame his intervention not as an attack but as a moral appeal. “Please do not attribute any motives. My hand on my heart, I really want you to do well,” he said. “But I believe that the people of Kashmir deserve that you come here and show the same concern for pellet victims as you have shown in Delhi.”
His closing words carried the weight of an indictment, not of one man alone, but of a political culture that has long treated Kashmiri pain as peripheral.
“It is time to send a message to all. The Kashmiris are not lesser human beings. Let law be the same for all. Let there be no space for selective justice and let us not allow our own people to be tyrannised,” Lone said, leaving little room for ambiguity about where he stands and where, in his view, the rest of the country has long failed to.
