South Asia Human Rights Journalist Association

Srinagar, 24 October 2013 : A human rights forum, the Voice of Victims, in a report has revealed the presence of around 130 unidentified bodies in two graveyards of Sumbal area of Sonawari. The report said that twenty of these bodies were mutilated while some graves contained more than one body.
The  human rights group in Kashmir Thursday has said that they have discovered mass graves in which more than 130 unidentified bodies have been buried. Two mass graves containing nearly 130 unidentified human bodies were discovered by Voice of Victims human rights group in nearly four-month-long investigation in Sonawari area of Bandipora in north Kashmir. The group credited the discovery to the assistance of locals who helped them in finding an unnamed graveyard in the area.
The Executive Director of VoV, Abdul Qadeer, and Coordinator, Abdur Rauf Khan, in a report released in Srinagar while giving details of the unidentified persons buried in the two graveyard during the last two decades, said that they personally visited the said graveyards located in Butt Mohalla and Main Colony in Sumbal and met one, Manzoor Ahmad and several other local people who participated in the burial of unidentified persons.
They said that according to the locals, some 80 bodies 20 of them mutilated were buried in Butt Mohalla graveyard during the past 20 years. They said that some graves contained more than one bodies.
Abdul Qadeer and Abdur Rauf Khan said that the local people told them that 50 unknown bodies had been buried in the Main Colony graveyard, where used to be a camp of Task Force. They said that officers and personnel of the camp had buried several bodies in its premises after killing them in torture cells and fake encounters.
They said that according to the local people Task Force Inspector Farooq Ahmad Gadru had buried a young girl of Nishat area of Srinagar in the camp premises after alleged killing her. Later her body was shifted to some other place after removal of the camp.
Abdul Qadeer and Abdur Rauf Khan said that most of the unidentified people buried in these graves had torture or bullet marks. They demanded an impartial probe into all identified graves discovered in Kashmir.
“An investigation team headed by Abdul Qadeer Dar, Executive Director visited the area and gathered information about the people who were buried in a graveyard in Bhat Mahle during the past 23 years,” Abdul Rouf Khan, the co-coordinator of the group, said.
“The troops and police used to bring bodies and hand over to the locals for burial. They revealed that the unidentified men were detained by the forces in nearby Special Task Force(STF) camp and after killing them they were handed over to local committee for burial,” he said.
Quoting a local, Manzoor Ahmad, Khan said the troops had once brought a body and handed over to him for burial. “While the forces identified him as a Pakistani militant, he later turned out to be a local resident of south Kashmir’s Kokernag. His body was exhumed a year later from the graveyard,” Khan said.
The VOV investigators also found that a person identified as Abu Hafiz, who was reported to be a resident of Pakistan and killed in an encounter at Safapora, Ganderbal was actually Abdul Rehman Padroo, a resident of Kokernag.
“He was a carpenter who was picked up by the forces in Srinagar on December 8, 2006, and later killed in fake encounter at Safapora. Police on January 28, 2007, clearly stated that he was killed by its Special Operations Group (SOG) in a fake encounter in Ganderbal and his body was exhumed from Bhat Mahle graveyard,” he said.
 
Locals have told the group that they are witness to burial of at least 20 charred bodied. “Once we refused to bury the unidentified bodies, armed forces started burying them inside the STF camp few meters away from the graveyard,” locals told the VOP investigators. 
“50 bodies have been buried inside the dreaded Special Operatons Group (SOG) camp which is surrounded by government offices including a paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force camp. Once an infamous and cruel police inspector abducted and raped a teenage girl from the area and later killed her. She was also buried inside the camp. After the SOG evacuated the camp, her body was also exhumed,” the group said.
This is not the first time that mass graves have been discovered in the disputed Kashmir territory. From 2010-2012, a prominent human rights group in Kashmir identified and to have discovered a series of mass graves in various parts of Kashmir containing over 3500 bodies. The graves were identifed in Kupwara, Barmulla, Srinagar, Bandipore, Poonch, Rajouri areas.
More than 10,000 are feared missing from Kashmir Valley in the last 24years of conflict with a majority of disappearances by government forces.
“If the bodies buried in these graveyards are identified, many Indian troops and Kashmir police personnel involved in the killing of these people would be exposed and the victims will get justice for which they are waiting for a long time,” the group said. (www.sahrja.com)