SRINAGAR: Mohammed Maqbool, the only pathologist working in occupied Kashmir, says he wants out of his job before it kills him. After handling thousands of bodies, Maqbool, who started doing autopsies when he was assigned to a government mortuary, says he is “haunted by the dead” — even in his sleep.

“This profession is killing me slowly,” Maqbool said in an interview in Srinagar.

Maqbool, who trained as a nurse, has been doing autopsies since the revolution began.

He discovers the cause of death in victims of shootouts, explosions and other attacks in the revolt that has left at least 40,000 people dead, according to official figures.

Maqbool, who has a receding hairline and a weary face, is called out every time a militant, soldier or civilian is killed to slice open their bodies in order to determine the cause of death — a bullet through the head or stomach, loss of blood from an explosion, or a host of other violent causes.

“Whenever tragedy strikes, he has to rush to the police hospital to carry out autopsies, day or night,” says Maqbool’s daughter, Rubina Manzoor, 32.

Rarely a day passes without bloodshed in the snow-capped Himalayan state, once a top tourist destination.

“Maqbool has become indispensable for us,” says the region’s senior police officer Shri Murari Sahai.

Clean-shaven Maqbool says he has become more “emotionless” over the years but he still finds dealing with the bodies of children traumatic.

“After performing post mortems on children, I can’t eat food. I try to sleep but I don’t succeed even after taking tranquilisers. The innocent faces make you sob within,” he said.

“While working on the bodies of children my scalpel doesn’t work, my hands tremble,” he says.

The lack of other health profe ssionals to help Maqbool in his task highlights the paucity of health resources in Kashmir.

But Maqbool says he believes peace is finally coming to Kashmir.

The proof is a drop in the number of bodies arriving at the mortuary since the start of a slow-moving peace process between India and Pakistan in 2004, he said.

The talks are chiefly aimed at settling their differences over the region which both claim and which has triggered two of their three wars.

“I have been praying all these years for peace to return,” Maqbool said.—AFP