Mohammed Maqbool, the only pathologist working in insurgency-racked Indian 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, urban hub of the revolt against New Delhi's rule that began in 1989. Maqbool, who trained as a nurse, has been doing autopsies since the separatist uprising 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 tranquillisers. 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 professionals to help Maqbool in his task highlights the paucity of health resources in Occupied Kashmir. Maqbool says he must have "worked on thousands of bodies" since the start of the insurrection by Islamic separatists.
He once found a man alive under a pile of corpses after a massive explosion in Srinagar. "I felt his pulse by chance and to my shock he was breathing," he said. "We pulled him from under the pile of seven bodies and took him to a neighbouring hospital," he said, adding the man survived. But Maqbool says he believes peace is finally coming to Occupied Kashmir. "I have been praying all these years for peace to return," Maqbool said.
"I think my prayers are being answered because fewer bodies are landing up at the mortuary. On average now, two people die daily in violence, down from 10 a day six years ago.
Despite the hardships he must endure, Maqbool has seen little financial benefit from the job. He is paid a salary of 9,000 rupees (225 dollars) by the government and gets nothing for working overtime. He lives in a run-down two-room apartment in a congested area of Srinagar. "What can I do? This is the only job I have," says Maqbool.