Valley group admits militants responsible for dissappearences - The Times of India
SRINAGAR: For the first time in two decades of turmoil in Jammu and Kashmir, a valley-based human rights group has admitted that militants were responsible for more enforced disappearances than the security forces.
Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), an organisation seeking whereabouts of the missing persons in the state, said of the 132 cases it has documented, militant groups were responsible for 24 cases of enforced disappearances compared to 22 by the security forces, including police.
"According to documented findings, out of 132 disappearance cases, 21 have been perpetrated by forces of the Indian army, 24 by different militant groups and one by the personnel of Jammu and Kashmir police," spokesman of APDP Yasin ul Hassan Malik said.
In 43 other cases, the perpetrators were unidentified gunmen and in the remaining 43 cases, the victims disappeared in unknown circumstances.
The APDP on Saturday submitted a list of 132 cases of enforced disappearances in remote Banihal area to the state human rights commission (SHRC).
In the 24 cases of disappearances, as reported by the families of the victims, notorious Hizbul Mujahideen militant Nazir Ahmed Wani alias Papplu was blamed for 10 cases. Wani was later killed by the militants of Hizbul Mujahideen itself.
Over the years, the separatists and human rights activists in Kashmir have been blaming security forces for the enforced disappearances, which APDP puts at 8,000, since militancy erupted in the state in 1990.
The APDP, an organisation mainly consisting of relatives of missing persons, believe that their kin might be buried in the hundreds of unmarked graves across the state.
The investigative wing of SHRC earlier this year established presence of more than 2000 unmarked graves in three north Kashmir districts of Bandipora, Kupwara and Baramulla.
The SHRC endorsed the findings of the probe and recommended that an impartial inquiry by an independent agency be carried out into the unmarked graves to establish the identity of those buried in them and the bringing to book those responsible for their killings.