For Ram Chandra Sharma, 27, landmines are not part of war-time tales but a ubiquitous danger, very real and near. A resident of Daulatpura village on the border with Pakistan in Rajasthan's Sri Ganganagar district, he has seen four village people blown into pieces and another six maimed for life by mines. Anxious about the lurking threat, Sharma, a tailor by profession, got his small field, 100 km from Daulatpura, cleared of all mines by the army. Assured of safety, last month he visited his field with his nephew. On returning to his uncle's home, he saw his nephew pulling out a glittering object the size of a shoe-polish box from his pocket. He had picked up the box from the fields. "Give it to me, it can be dangerous," shouted Sharma. The boy laughed and pulled away his "toy". It exploded. Shrapnel chopped off both of Sharma's hands at the wrists, blinded him and pierced into his chest. His nephew has little hope of regaining vision in one eye.

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RAM CHANDRA SHARMA, 27, Daulatpura, Sri Ganganagar. He lost both his hands and eyes last month when he was trying to snatch a landmine from his nephew. "I took care of my entire family, now I can't even swat flies."

In no time, a man who was taking care of his family turned into a bedridden bundle of wound who can't even swat away swarming flies. "Papa ... hurt," two-year-old Yashoda explains to visitors. "I am dead," says Sharma in a feeble voice. "What can I do now?"

Daulatpura is one of the hundreds of villages along the international border in Rajasthan, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir where the army had laid lakhs of landmines in vast tracts during Operation Parakram that was launched to prepare for war with Pakistan after the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. It was one of the most massive mine-laying operations in Indian history. Hostilities were averted but some are still paying the price for a war that was never waged. According to a survey carried out by the Indian Institute for Peace Disarmament and Environment Protection (IIPDEP), 58 civilians have been killed and 310 others injured by anti-personnel landmines between January 2002 and March 2004 in the three states bordering Pakistan. Even the army had admitted to 176 landmine casualties, as reported by the IIPDEP survey, in Operation Parakram by December 2002.

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MITO BAI, Ladduka, Ferozepur. In June 2003, her sons, Gurcharan Singh, 14, and Ajit Singh, 8, were killed in a mine blast. The Government says it is unclear about the explosion. "I did not get any compensation and even if I get it now it will not change my life."

These landmines, which are designed to maim rather than kill, were supposedly removed a year ago. But as India Today found out, casualties continue even today. The government figures include only the cases recommended for compensation and even the IIPDEP figures do not reflect the actual scale of casualties as they exclude unexploded-ordnance victims (119) and those killed or injured by anti-tank mines (21) and fuse (7). This weakens India's stand on not signing the UN Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines, which recognises landmines as a danger to civil population.

What is significant about the accidents is they have occurred despite all precautionary measures. The army had prominently marked and barbed landmine fields. It had also created awareness among the people in the vicinity through regular campaigns warning against entering the marked areas. The casualties take place because mines were laid in populated areas and for so long (a year and a half of Operation Parakram) that people tend to err. Demining operation-identifying mines through metal detectors, combing and digging fields and running tanks and heavy vehicles to blast landmines with pressure-carries on for months. But it is not hundred per cent effective. People unwittingly fall victim as these mines explode in boxes presumed to be empty, in firewood while preparing food, while trying to pull cattle that have strayed into minefields and while watering crops. As an exception that happens too often, small and light mines move from minefields with the shifting sand dunes or flowing water and explode with pressure as little as applied in sticking a revenue stamp.

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RAJ KAUR, Bambbattu, Ferozepur. Kaur lost both her legs in October 2002, when she was crossing a field on her way back home. She can no longer work on her farmland. "This is no life. When you have lost your body parts you do not live a full life."

How easily landmines get carried away and bring death was proved in Mirjewala village in Sri Ganganagar. In the summer of 2002, Sushma, 14, was playing in a distributary of the Indira Gandhi Canal when she saw a small box wrapped in wires floating. "Telephone,'' shouted children and began pulling the wires. They had just started screaming "hello hello" as Sushma brought the box closer to her ears when a massive explosion blew her body into pieces.

As such horror stories filter in from mine tracts from Barmer to Poonch, it is pertinent to ask if India is paying a high cost for using this strategy. And what better time to do it than when the world is gearing up for the Nairobi Summit on Mine-Free World (see box). India is estimated to have a stockpile of 5-10 million landmines, of which one million were deployed during Operation Parakram. India cites a constant risk of war as a reason for not signing the Mine Ban Treaty. However, Balkrishna Kurvey of IIPDEP, who brokered the no-landmine-use treaty with the Naga insurgent group NSCN (IM) in Geneva last year, says, "The advancing enemy also knows how to avoid the landmines. In India's wars, landmines have not inflicted much damage on the enemy."

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