‘Stuck in a nightmare’: A Kashmiri woman’s battle with heroin addiction


‘Stuck in a nightmare’: A Kashmiri woman’s battle with heroin addiction

By Mashkoora Khan Published On 10 Mar 2025 Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – Afiya’s* frail fingers pick at the loose threads of her worn dark-brown sweater as she sits at the edge of her bed in the rehabilitation ward of Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital in Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar. With faded and stained clothes hanging loosely on her thin frame, eyes down-cast, she says: “I used to dream of flying high above the mountains, touching the blue sky as a flight attendant. Now, I am stuck in a nightmare, high on drugs, fighting for my life.” Afiya, 24, is only one among thousands of people addicted to heroin in the disputed region where a growing epidemic of drug addiction is consuming young lives. A 2022 study by the psychiatry department of the Government Medical College in Srinagar found that Kashmir had overtaken Punjab, the northwestern Indian state battling a drug crisis for decades, in the number of cases of narcotics use per capita.