J-K High Court declines to ban use of pellet guns by security forces in Kashmir

A division bench of Justice Ali Mohammad Magrey and Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court refused to ban the use of pellet guns for crowd control during protests in the region. The Court dismissed a PIL that sought a ban on pellet guns. The Court held that, “It is manifest that so long as there is violence by unruly mobs, the use of force is inevitable.”

The PIL had been filed by the Kashmir High Court Bar Association in 2016 in the wake of the mass protests following the killing of Hizb commander Burhan Wani and pellet injuries to hundreds of people in the protests that ensued.

The High Court held that considering the ground situation prevailing currently, and the fact that the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, has already constituted a committee of experts through its memorandum dated July 26, 2016, for exploring an alternative to pellet guns; before filing of the report by the expert committee and a decision taken at the government level, the Court was not inclined to prohibit the use of pellet guns in rare and extreme situations.

The Court further added that, “This court in the writ jurisdiction, without any finding rendered by a competent forum/authority, cannot decide whether the use of force in a particular incident is excessive or not.”