Kolkata: Bashirul Sarkar, the only labourer fortunate to have escaped Tuesday’s terrorist attack in Kashmir, said he would never return to the Valley, no matter what the financial circumstances.
Devastated over the loss of five of his friends, who were gunned down in Kulgam district of the Union Territory, Bashirul Sarkar said Thursday that he is yet to come to terms with the ghastly incident.
Bashirul Sarkar had gone out to fetch food when terrorists had attacked his fellow mates. Five were shot dead and a sixth labourer, who sustained bullet injuries, is currently undergoing treatment at a Srinagar hospital.
“I will never go back to Kashmir… I’ve lost five of my friends there. I’ll do something else to survive but would never want to go back to Kashmir for work, Sarkar said at SSKM hospital here, where he was admitted for a day after reaching the city Wednesday from the trouble-torn Valley.
Sarkar slowly recounted the event that unfolded Tuesday. “I had been working the entire day and returned home in the evening. Shortly after, I went out to fetch cooked rice for all of us. Suddenly, after walking a certain distance, the shopkeepers in the area shouted ‘bhago, bhago yeha se bhago’ (run away from here),” Sarkar stated.
“I could not tell what happened but I ran to our employer’s house nearby There, we heard sounds of firing… then it all ended. They were my friends. We left for Kashmir together but could not return to our homes together,” lamented the apple orchard worker.
The 42-year-old said he owned a small piece of land where he had sown paddy seeds during the last week of September before leaving for Kashmir.
“I want to go home. I want to see my family, my mother, my daughter and my wife… I don’t want to stay here any longer,” a visibly jittery Sarkar said before his release from the hospital.
Doctors, who attended to Sarkar, said there was no danger to his heath, but ‘Bashirul needs professional help to recover from the shock and trauma’.
“We released him as he had been insisting on going back home to meet his family. Sarkar has been asked to follow our prescribed medicines and guidance,” a senior doctor at the SSKM hospital informed.
Agencies