In Kashmir young boys sell spent ammunition at Rs 200/kg.

[hkdas]

Srinagar: Every morning, Faizaan (name changed), a ten-year-old boy, sets off from his home in a village in the Shopian district of South Kashmir to help his poor family make a living. He walks down to a shooting range and spends the next couple of hours digging through the earth, picking up live and spent bullets. When he is done, he has a bag full of ammunition to carry on his tender shoulders back to his home. In the evening, a scrap dealer comes to the village to buy the spoils for Rs. 200 a kilogram.
Faizaan and many young boys of his age are drawn to this artillery range run by the army near the Sedow village in Shopian. The boys, without a concern for their own safety, rummage through the range every day to pick up the ammunition. Neither the army nor the police make an effort to prevent young boys like Faizaan from going into such a dangerous zone.
The Army uses the area where Faizaan picks up bullets as a shooting range. The Kashmir Monitor’s investigation revealed that bullets found by boys, scattered in the range, are the ones that miss the target and pierce into the hillside. After the drill draws to a close and the army withdraws, these kids go and dig the bullets out from the earth.
“We collect several kilograms of bullets and later sell them to the scrap dealers who come in auto-rickshaws. They pay us Rs 200 per kilogram,” said Faizaan who was hanging out with other boys in the village, none of whom was more than twelve years old. They said the army mostly conducts these drills in the evenings and sometimes during the night.
“When they fire them during the night, we feel as if an encounter is raging,” said these boys.
All of the boys come from poor families, which can’t afford to send the children to school because leaving them at school during the day would deny a family a chance to make a little more money through the young boy.
“We collect bullets and forest wood the whole day. We earn money and buy lots of things,” they said, with smiles on their faces.
Talking to the Kashmir Monitor, the Srinagar-based spokesperson of the army, Colonel N N Joshi, said the Army is not doing any artillery drills in the area. “Army is not doing any artillery firing there,” he said. However, Joshi said that the possession of bullets is illegal. “Except for those who own a licensed weapon; even then, the nature of the license determines how much ammunition one can posses,” he said.
“The possession of used bullets is completely illegal. Any part of the round, be it the projectile or the empty khokha...both are illegal because how can you justify that you have not fired it?” he said.
Joshi said there is a procedure at these places where drills or training is being conducted. “The bullets (both khoka and projectile) that remain in the range are contracted out after the firing period is over. They are deposited back to a government registered auctioneer and later crushed. No one can buy them,” he said.
Arshid Hussain, the noted psychiatrist of the Kashmir valley, said the matter is a cause of concern and the children should be kept away from such areas “In this tender age if these children get used to such things which are related to violence, it can be a cause of concern. Parents shouldn’t allow their children to go to these places and collect such things for few bucks,” he said.

http://www.kashmirmonitor.in/news-in-shopian-young-boys-sell-spent-ammunition-rs-200kg-104716.aspx

anything happens to these idiots who try make money by selling used ammo.. separatists will start blaming army, and this will be their new reason for calling a shutdown in the state..

 

[Manindra]

Corrupt to core politicians does not have time to take care of any basic necessity like education, health & infrastructure etc..
They are all busy filling their coffers.