Bulu Mir at SSKM

Bulu Mir, the 11-year-old hit by a bullet on the head during the Nandigram violence, was operated upon at SSKM Hospital on Wednesday.

“The pellet is still lodged in the boy’s brain. But the broken pieces of skull have been removed,” said one of the doctors who performed the surgery.

According to him, the surgery was performed to minimise chances of infection. “The cerebrospinal fluid was flowing out of the brain because of the injury. This could have caused infection in the brain and complicated matters,” he explained. The surgery has stopped the cerebrospinal fluid from flowing out.

The boy’s condition has improved after the two-and-a-half-hour surgery, said the doctor. Bulu spoke to his parents after the operation.

“I could not sleep last night as my son was writhing in pain. He had pain in his eyes and could not even eat,” said the boy’s mother, Anjuman Bibi.

Bulu was playing in the courtyard of his house in Satangabari village when the bullet hit him. After being admitted in the hospital’s paediatric unit on Saturday evening, he was left on the floor outside the ward for two nights as he was not accompanied by his mother or any other female guardian.

According to hospital rules, a child can stay in the paediatric ward only if he or she is accompanied by a female guardian. Bulu’s mother Anjuman Bibi could not come down to Calcutta on Sunday because of an East Midnapore bandh.

Three other men admitted at SSKM Hospital with bullet injuries sustained during the Nandigram violence — Gokul Das, 50, Debabrata Jana, 17, and Shankar Majhi, 28 — are stable, said officials.