Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Pellet guns in Kashmir Valley

Pellet guns in the Kashmir Valley
For a month I have been following with fascinated horror the injuries and killings by pellet guns in the Kashmir Valley. These pellet guns were introduced after the last major bout of stone pelting in 2010 as a ‘non-lethal’ mode of crowd control – because they do not kill (only maim). Today the Indian Army distances itself from the mess by saying that it’s the CRPF which is tackling the protesters. There are three main arguments that I have heard so far:

a    a)  The CRPF has instructions to fire below the waist so if any protester got injured in the head it was because he or she bent down to pick up a rock
      b) In the heat of trying to quell the protests, the aim of the CRPF may have been a bit off
      c) Although pellet guns are (‘properly used’) ‘nonlethal’, they are used in the last resort – and when anyone is being attacked by a murderous mob (possibly containing armed militants)
that is much larger than your own forces, then they will use the pellet guns in self-defence in the most effective way and even at distances much lower than the ‘recommended range’.

I think that any dispassionate examination of the facts will show that there was either criminal incompetence or murderous intent at work here. Even the fascist Israelis faced by hostile (and suicidal) Palestinians do not use metal pellets; they use rubber- or polyethylene-coated metal pellets. Even these coated pellets cause fatal injuries at short range, but uncoated metal pellets are bound to be much worse.
Having said that, I think that Kashmiri protesters are also being extremely callous in bringing, day after day, young boys to the protests: if the CRPF actually abide by the policy of aiming for boots, the children are much more likely to be hit.

I have tried to analyze the available data – although even thinking about somebody getting pellet injuries in the body, head or eyes is difficult – it is important to do it so that such stupid and inhuman methods are banned – just as land mines were. Even if he did not do the math, any competent and experienced Indian Army officer should have been able to foresee the kind of damage that pellet guns will do to crowds of civilians.

India has not done itself any favours by refusing to stop the use of pellet guns in the Kashmir Valley. With the huge amount of data available in the media or the internet, India is very likely to be attacked for human rights violations – not just by Pakistan – but by the whole world, maybe in the International Court of Justice. Forget about winning hearts and minds in Kashmir, and concentrate on just basic human decency. The defence  analyst Ajai Sahni (mentioned below) doubts whether there are any truly non-lethal weapons, since they all have ‘issues’. But the use of pellet guns should be beyond the pale even as ostensibly ‘non-lethal’ weapons: the scatter of pellets is too much for them to be ‘aimed’ with any tolerable degree of accuracy. Only Egypt and Bahrain use pellet guns – not the best of company for India to keep.

Even the hard-line Kashmiri, Sushil Pandit agreed that the huge damage inflicted on protesters is ‘gut-wrenching’, while Sitaram Yechury called the use of these weapons as ‘criminal’ and ‘inhuman’.


In the fortnight since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) have fired as many as 2,102 pellet
cartridges in the Valley to disperse protesters.
The Sunday Express has learnt that over 50 per cent of the 317 people, who sustained pellet injuries, have been hit in the eye.
The CRPF is also looking at the use of Condor guns used by UN peacekeeping forces. The guns fire spherical rubber pellets which cause painful bruises.
The use of pellet guns by CRPF is second only to tear smoke shells which have been fired over 4,500 times. The CRPF has ten mandated non-lethal weapons
for use in different situations. Other non-lethal weapons used by CRPF in the Valley include plastic pellet guns, rubber bullets, stun grenades, multi-button shells,
blank rounds, pepper balls and capsicum grenades. All have been used in the recent protests.
CRPF Director General K Durga Prasad, while expressing concern over civilian injuries, said: “Only after all non-lethal options are exhausted, pellet guns are used.
CRPF sources said that pellet guns are most effective because the cartridge contains hundreds of small pellets which spread out after being fired and cover a large part of the
crowd. Plastic cartridges, on the other hand, fire just three plastic pellets while rubber bullets are for target firing. There is a peculiar problem with tear smoke shells.
“If the wind is not favourable, it will blow away from the crowd without much impact. Protesters also have become smart over the years. They throw back the shells
towards us, forcing us to retreat,” a CRPF officer said.
Similarly, pepper balls and capsicum grenades (cause severe burning sensation) are best suited for targeting small crowds in alleys and lanes.
There is no such problem with pellet guns. “They also cause prolonged physical pain, forcing the injured to retreat. Earlier, forces used No. 4 pellets which are bigger
in size. But injuries caused by them were potentially fatal. We have now shifted to No. 9 pellets and occasionally use No. 8 pellets,” the officer said.
Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for use of non-lethal weapons and training of men who fire them has been a cause of concern.
CRPF sources maintain that the SOP prepared by Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) has no mention of pellet guns.
“We (CRPF) have our own SOPs. We have to ensure that pellets guns are fired from a distance of at least 50 metres and are aimed at boots. Also, in a group of 20 CRPF men,
only three carry pellet guns. The rest carry other non-lethal weapons,” another CRPF officer said.


“Aiming it wrong”    Justice Harjit Singh Bedi Ind Exp. 23rd July 2016:

The data about pellet guns has been taken from the article by H.S.Bedi, sourced from “Forensic Science in criminal investigations and trials”:

Range (metres)
Diameter of spread circle (metres)
10
0.54
15
0.71
20
0.88
25
1.05
30
1.22
35
1.44


This data is plotted and fitted to a straight line:
The data from the article by Bedi is fitted (see above plot) to:
D = 0.19524 + 0.03429 R
where D is the diameter of spread at a distance R.
According to C. G. G. Aitken and David A. Stoney in,“The Use Of Statistics In Forensic Science” (CRC, 1991) pp. 170-5 :
D is a linear function of range R, and D is the diameter of the circle that encloses all the pellets at a distance R.

The slope of D vs R (0.03429) corresponds to an angular spread of 1.96° - that is at a fairly short distance there is not much spread.
At a distance of 10 metres, the angle subtended by a human face is about: 1.2°.
A human face is typically 15 cms wide and 23 cms high.
Note that this is a simple approximation of a face projected on to a rectangle. It disregards the curvature of the face. An example is that the projected area of a sphere is half that of
its frontal surface area:
                                                            

Where beta is the angle between the normal to the area element dA and the normal to the arbitrary plane on which we wish to project – in this case, the frontal plane.
However, one can think of the 15x23 cm2 as the smallest rectangle completely covering the face as seen from the front.

A pellet gun emits 600 pellets in a circle of diameter 0.54 metres at a distance of 10 metres, and each pellet is of 1.22 mm diameter.

If the circle is centred (aimed) around the face, it will be hit by: 600 * (15)(23)/[(3.14)(27)(27)] =   90 pellets.

Radiographs of the heads of Kashmiris hit by pellets show a large number of pellets – maybe around 100 in the head. 
The radiographs are there in thequint.com:


There are three images of human heads: the one on the left has more than 120 pellets, the one in the middle more than 40, and the one on the right about 10. These pellets are clearly
visible and the scanned images are not of diagnostic quality, so the actual number is probably more. And the images are taken from one side of the head, so there may be more pellets on the
other side of the head that is not shown.


The size of a human eye is roughly 2.5 x 1.5 cms.
What is the chance a pellet will hit an eye?
The total area is 7.5 cm2 for both eyes.
The chance of a single pellet hitting the eye is: (7.5)/[(15)(23)] = -0217. About 2%.
So the chances of it missing the eye are about: 97.83%.
But if we assume that 90 pellets may hit the face, the chances that all of them will miss an eye is:
(0.9783)90 = 0.139.
That is, 86% probability of hitting an eye at a distance of 10 metres.

R (m)
Probability of
Hitting an eye (%)
10
86
20
53
30
32
40
21
50
15
60
11
70
8
80
6
90
5
100
4

Let us assume only 30 pellets actually hit the face, then the chance that one of them will hit the eye is: 0.483, or 48.3%.

In today’s Indian Express article by Deeptiman Tiwary, the report is that over 50% of 317 patients have been hit in the eye (24th July 2016).

The number of cartridges has been given as 2,102. The fact that 317 people were hit means that they were quite accurate: they hit 15% of
the time – and they hit an eye with more than 7% of the cartridges used.

This would argue that the people who have been hit have all been deliberately targeted by firing at the head. If the crowds were all dense, then it is possible
That about 85% of the shots were not targeted directly at people – either deliberately or by bad aim.


“There is a pattern behind the action by forces on the protesters. At least 90 percent of these persons had firearm injuries above waist—in head, chest, and abdomen,” said a
senior doctor at the SHMS hospital. This refers to all firearm injuries - including bullets and pellets.

In any case, the fact that >50% of those hit were hit in the eye implies that the aim was above the waist.
The argument by some military participants on TV has been that the victim may have been hit in the face by pellets because he bent down
– but this argument is difficult to sustain for more than a hundred victims.

At a distance of 10 metres, a human who is 1.5 metres tall subtends an angle of 8.5°, as compared to about 1.2° for the face – while the angular range of the pellet gun is 1.96°.  Firing below the waist should indeed be possible. Also, considering the total number of pellets embedded in the bodies of the victims, it is extremely unlikely that the CRPF
actually aimed from a distance of 50 metres. If they had, the spread of the pellets would have been D = 1.7 m.
Suppose we consider a distance R =43.7 m. At this distance, D = 1.5 m.
Assume a human being has a projected frontal area of 1.5 x 0.4 m2 (i.e. 0.6 m2). Then the number of pellets that will hit him, assuming that the pellet gun is perfectly aimed is: 300*(0.6/1.77) = 102,
where the pellets are distributed across an area (pi)D2/4 = 1.77 m2.

Some of the radiograph images in thequint (mentioned above) show this kind of distribution of pellets across the whole body of the victim, and in the two images of the front view of the body the numbers of pellets is clearly more than 40.
 This would seem to imply that, in some cases at least, the victim was fired upon by CRPF at the mandated distance of 50 metres.
Unless a comprehensive database is produced by doctors in the Valley, it will be difficult to draw more accurate conclusions.

Either the CRPF personnel were untrained – or some of them deliberately targeted their victims. Also, see Ajai Sahni’s comments below:

PHR report:
Smaller pellets may have wider dispersal patterns and less accurate aim; larger pellets may have higher kinetic energy.
Metal shot has been banned in most countries as excessively dangerous, but it is still used regularly in Egypt & Bahrain.

The UNDP report, ”Crowd Control: Israel’s use of crowd control weapons in the West Bank” (Jan.2013)  researched by B’Tselem does not mention metal pellets at all: the only pellets used are coated with rubber or polyethylene. And rubber bullets were taken out of use before the second intifada.

The pellets being used by CRPF in Kashmir are not Israeli, and are manufactured in India by the Ordinance Factory in Ishapore, according to The Hindu:

.


In Kashmir, the Battle of Stones and Rubber Pellets is Politics by Other Means


It is not the brutality of the police or forces that has caused blinding injuries among agitators – it is the evaluation and selection process that resulted in the acquisition and deployment of pellet guns, despite well documented and recurrent evidence of the unacceptable consequences of their use in the control of violent crowds, globally (and even in J&K where they were first used in 2010).

The Ministry of Home Affairs has now belatedly announced the formation of a committee to evaluate options to pellet guns.

However, even a cursory examination of available ‘non-lethal’ technologies would demonstrate that none of these are without their own risks.” 

Another Kashmiri protester succumbs to pellets

8th Aug.2016 Srinagar Peerzada Ashiq
“Doctors who performed surgeries on those hit by pellets in SMHS and SKIMS hospitals in Srinagar told The Hindu that the three civilians died because they were shot from “a very very close range with the intention to kill.”
A pellet victim Riyaz Ahmad Shah, 21, a resident of Srinagar’s Chattabal locality, had his abdomen ripped apart last week. “More than 300 pellets were lodged inside his body, affecting all vital organs.
This only shows the gun was emptied by keeping barrel close to the victim’s body,” said a doctor. 
Figures at the Valley’s premier SMHS hospital paint a grim picture.
Of 933 pellet cases, 356 suffered eye injuries and 324 extra-ocular injuries. Similarly, the hospital treated 67 bullet injury cases.
Non-lethal tear-smoke shell injuries are less at 35.

The fact that 356 patients suffered eye injuries, 324 suffered extra-ocular injuries – presumably to the head – and the remaining 253 suffered injuries to the rest of the body shows a clear trend, that is not in line with the stated policy of shooting below the waist – since the number of protesters who have that particular type of injury seems relatively small.

The case of the ATM guard who was killed and whose body was hit by more than 300 pellets shows that he was shot at short range (a few metres) and with – as indicated above in Peerzada Ashiq’s report – ‘with the intention to kill.’

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