A thriving market for Viagra has developed among young men in Kashmir who have been rendered sexually dysfunctional by living under the stress and violence of a 13-year-old civil war.
Doctors in the state's summer capital Srinagar said Kashmir's insurgency has spawned a generation of youngsters suffering from depression and stress which in turn had led to psycho-sexual malfunction.
In desperation, these young men turned for succour to the hugely expensive but banned blue Viagra pill. The struggle for an independent homeland in Kashmir has claimed over 35,000 lives.
"Depressive disorders are common here," Dr Mushtaq Margroob said. And unless the underlying depression is not treated the problem will not be solved, the psychiatrist added.
Scores of chemists in Srinagar admitted selling Viagra clandestinely to a host of young men for over 500 rupees (€10) a tablet. One chemist in the heart of the city boasted about having charged a desperate youngster 10,000 rupees (€208) for one tablet when the drug was relatively new.
One chemist said that the number of Viagra customers from rural areas was growing as militancy had spread to virtually every village across the Kashmir Valley.
Doctors said some young patients were victims of torture by the security forces, interrogated brutally with electrical currents passed through their genitals.
"Often the victim is rendered impotent, not by the electric shock but by the psychological fallout of the torture," one doctor said.
