Srinagar, August 14, 2012: The Jammu and Kashmir Human Rights Commission has given the District Magistrate, Rajouri, Saugat Biswas, a three-week ultimatum to submit his report on the presence of unmarked graves in Rajouri district.
The Jammu and Kashmir regime led by Omar Abdullah and police have already filed their reports in response to a petition related to such graves in Jammu and Kashmir, specially in Rajouri and Poonch.
Earlier, during the hearing on May 28, the commission had given final opportunity to submit reports to these respondents observing that it would order an independent and impartial enquiry into the issue if they failed to do so.
As the case came up for hearing before a Division Bench of the commission today, it was informed that the state government and J&K police headquarters had already submitted their reports but the report from the District Magistrate was awaited.
“The human rights commission has now granted the Rajouri District Magistrate final opportunity to file his report within three weeks,” Secretary to the commission Tariq Banday told The Tribune. The next hearing is on September 18.
During the last hearing, the HRC had asked the authority to carry out investigations about the presence of unmarked graves in Rajouri and Poonch.
The directions of the commission had come after a rejoinder was submitted by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and the International Peoples Tribunal for Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir before the commission. In the rejoinder, it was said that that there were around 2,717 graves in 90 graveyards in Poonch and 1,127 graves in 118 graveyards in Rajouri.
The human rights commission, however, is awaiting the Action Taken Report (ATR) from the administration or Indian establishment running in Kashmir into the recommendations it had made last year on the presence of unmarked graves in the Valley.
A Division Bench of the HRC had suggested that means such as DNA profiling be used to identify the bodies buried at 38 places in Kashmir. The bench had made six recommendations to address the issue and linked it to cases of disappearances in the state.