It’s official now: thousands of ‘disappeared’ Kashmiri civilians did not vanish into thin air or across the border. They lie buried in unmarked mass graves – the victims of custodial murders by security forces in the Valley.
A probe by the Kashmir State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) probe establishes that more than 2000 bodies lie in 38 unmarked graves in northern Kashmir.
For the people of Kashmir, this is not a sensational discovery. They can only feel a grim sense of vindication of what they have long been alleging. The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, in March 2008, released a report, ‘Facts Underground’, that pointed to the presence of the unmarked graves. The SHRC enquiry was initiated in response to the APDP campaign.
In 2009 a report of the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) on Human Rights and Justice documented 2,700 unknown, unmarked, and mass graves.
Now the SHRC has stated that “beyond doubt,” 2156 bullet-ridden bodies have been found in 38 mass graves. Many of these were handed over by police to locals for burial as ‘unidentified militants.’ The SHRC report accepts that “There is every probability that these unidentified bodies may contain bodies of enforced disappearances.” In light of these findings, the SHRC has ordered a state-wide investigation including exhumation of the bodies, DNA profiling and matching with relatives of disappeared people, and lodging of FIRs.
Some of the bodies were defaced; 20 were charred and five only had skulls remaining. 18 of the graves contained more than one body each. The report also suggests that “to stop the misuse of powers under AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) and Disturbed Areas Act, it is necessary that wherever anybody is killed — whether he is a militant or an innocent civilian — his or her identification profile including DNA profile should be maintained properly.” This suggestion itself is an admission of how the draconian AFSPA is being used – as a license to murder civilians and maintain a reign of terror over the people in the areas where it is deployed.
The APDP estimates that around 10,000 people ‘disappeared’ during the last couple of decades. In some of the cases, where the disappeared person had been picked up by police or army officials from his home, the families pursued the matter, and probes were even ordered against the concerned security officials. But such enquiries mostly came to naught. The APDP is headed by Perveena Ahangar, whose son went missing in police custody 17 years ago. She has called for international human rights groups and Indian authorities to identify the people buried in the mass graves.
The families of the disappeared seek closure for the terrible uncertainty and pain they have endured. They also seek justice and punishment for the unconscionable murders, by Indian security forces, of their loved ones.
It is imperative that an unbiased drive to identify the bodies be launched before there is any chance of destruction or further decay of the evidence. As ordered by the SHRC, FIRs must be lodged in the case of all disappeared persons, and pursued at a fast track.
In the unmarked mass graves lie buried the dark reality of civilian life in Kashmir under military jackboots. It is a stark reminder that every Kashmiri family lives in terror of their loved one ‘vanishing’ after being picked up arbitrarily by security forces. This state of terror can end only when the right to self-determination of Kashmiris is respected and a political solution acceptable to the Kashmiri people sought and found.
