Jammu & Kashmir state has been under lockdown for a week, since the Indian government stripped it of its autonomy and imposed direct rule from New Delhi SRINAGAR: Firdousa Mehraj bought a sheep last week to sacrifice for Eid Al-Adha. But instead of celebrating the festival, she is sitting outside the intensive care unit of Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences in Srinagar praying for her 16-year-old son to recover from critical pellet wounds to his eyes. “We are a normal family and we want to live normally but we never thought in our life that this kind of tragedy would befall on us,” she told Arab News. Her teenage son was shot by Indian security forces last Friday, in his own home. “There was trouble going on outside,” Mehraj said. “Suddenly the troops entered our house chasing someone, they fired pellets and my son was hit. “This is a festival season and we were preparing for that. But now my Eid is destroyed. To be honest, the whole of Kashmir is in a pall of gloom.” The state has been under lockdown for a week, since the Indian government stripped it of its autonomy and imposed direct rule from New Delhi. Almost all electronic communication is blocked and troops patrol the streets. On Sunday, as the rest of the Muslim world began celebrations for Eid, Kashmir’s capital Srinagar was deserted. Police ordered people to stay in their homes and shops that dared to open were told to close. “There is strong anger among the people,” Srinagar newspaper editor Farooq Wani told Arab News. “We don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, but there is a sense of frustration. Usually the streets of Srinagar would be buzzing with activities for Eid, but it’s empty.”