Amnesty asks India to investigate unmarked graves in Held Kashmir

The Amnesty International has urged India to allow an impartial investigation of hundreds of unmarked graves in Indian-held Kashmir after a government report confirmed they contain more than 2,000 bullet-riddled bodies, including hundreds of local residents.
In a statement, the London-based international human rights group said that the investigation of graves in three regions also needs to be widened to all of the Indian-held disputed state. “All unmarked grave sites must be secured and investigations carried out by impartial forensic experts,” the group said.
In a recent report, the Jammu-Kashmir State Human Rights Commission said that 2,156 unidentified bodies were found in graves in three northern mountainous regions, while 574 other bodies in the graves were identified as local residents. The report is the first official acknowledgment that civilians killed in the two-decade conflict may have been buried in the unmarked graves.
Previously, officials insisted that all the bodies were of outside militant fighters. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has proposed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission be set up to investigate all killings since 1989. “The commission should be assigned the task to probe all the killings in the state. Whether the killings were carried out by militants or (Indian armed) forces, it needs to be probed,” Omar said.
Anti-India sentiments run deep in Kashmir and most people want independence or merger with Pakistan. More than 68,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict. Rights groups say some 8,000 people have disappeared, and accuse government forces of staging gunbattles to cover up killings.
In 2008, a rights group reported unmarked graves in 55 villages across the northern regions of Baramulla, Bandipore and Handwara, after which researchers and other groups reported finding thousands of single and mass graves without markers. Indian officials set up the commission to investigate and also began a separate police probe, the findings of which have yet to be released.