By Dr. Inam Malik

It starts like this.

You’ve been on your feet for 14 hours straight. You’ve stitched wounds, resuscitated a cardiac patient, scribbled prescriptions with half-shut eyes, and comforted a mother who just lost her child. It’s past midnight. You’re drained, but still alert, still showing up.

Then a man storms in, furious. He shouts that you’re ignoring him. Before you can reply, he slaps your colleague across the face.

And no one blinks.

That’s the part that haunts me most.

Doctors in Kashmir are no longer just healers. We’re targets. The emergency room is no longer just a place of urgency, it’s a pressure chamber, where grief, fear, and frustration explode.

And more and more, the blows are landing on us.

The fresh assault at a Srinagar hospital wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s just one more entry in a long, growing list. We are witnessing a shift: slow, dangerous, and deeply unsettling.

This region has seen pain before. Conflict, loss, endless cycles of uncertainty. But something is different now. We’re not just burdened. We’re breaking.

And it’s showing up in the worst place possible: the hospital.

Places like SMHS in........

© Kashmir Observer