A government commission in Indian-administered Kashmir on Friday called for thousands of bodies lying in unmarked graves in the troubled region to be identified.
Last month, Kashmir’s State Human Rights Commission confirmed the presence of more than 2,000 unidentified bodies in unmarked graves. Activists say many may be people who disappeared after being arrested by security forces.
On Friday the commission urged the government to identify the corpses, buried in 38 sites in northern Kashmir.
“The bodies in unmarked graves shall be identified by all available means and techniques so that even the identity of dead, in these unmarked graves, is possible with the claimed disappeared persons,” the commission said.
The commission recommended the prosecution of those found to be involved in crimes, including culpable homicide.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also urged the Indian Kashmir government to identify those buried.
An independent Srinagar-based group, the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice (IPT), documented unidentified bodies buried in the region’s northern villages in 2009.
The group has been urging authorities to hold an investigation into whether the graves held the remains of those who “disappeared,” as troops battled the insurgency launched in 1989 by rebels against New Delhi’s rule.
Rights activists say that 8,000 people have gone missing in Kashmir during more than 20 years of rebellion. Officials put the number of missing at between 1,000 and 3,000 and deny the accusations, saying the missing men crossed over into Pakistan for arms training.
Indian officials have repeatedly said that those buried in the graves were militants — mostly Pakistanis — killed in clashes with security forces.
The commission is also looking into fresh claims by residents that there are 3,844 unmarked graves at 208 locations in the southern districts of Rajouri and Poonch, bordering Pakistan-ruled Kashmir.
The commission on Friday asked the government to provide information about these graves within a period of 30 days, commission official Tariq Banday said.
The IPT says some of the graves may contain bodies of Indians and Bangladeshi workers who tried to cross into Pakistan illegally en route to Gulf countries in search of jobs.
The insurgency against New Delhi’s rule has left more than 47,000 people dead since 1989, according to an official count.
Human rights groups put the toll at double that number.
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