Srinagar, Sep 5: The state Government has rejected wide-scale DNA testing of bodies in thousands of unmarked graves despite pleas by the families of those who disappeared during two decades of fighting in the restive region.
 A report by the state’s Home department insisted that all those buried in the graves were militants and said that if families wanted DNA tests, they would have to identify both the graveyard and the exact grave where they think their disappeared relative was buried.
 The random collection of DNA from the graves would be an “academic exercise” that would “hurt the local sentiments,” the report said.
 Khurram Parvez, an official with the local Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, criticized the report as “yet another attempt by the Government to obfuscate the truth and sustain impunity.”
 The report was a response to a three-year investigation by the state-run Human Rights Commission confirming last year that 38 burial sites in north Kashmir contained 2,156 unidentified bodies. The Human Rights Commission said 574 other bodies found in the graves were identified as local residents, and it urged widespread DNA testing.
 Those findings reversed India’s longtime insistence that the dead were foreign militants.
 But the new state Government report, filed to the Human Rights Commission last month but not released publicly, rejected the Commission’s investigation and insisted all the bodies in the graves were combatants.
 Police could not ascertain the identities of the dead rebels because they operated in disguise and in remote regions far away from their homes, the report said.
 “The dead bodies of these militants were accordingly categorized as unidentified,” it said.
 Separatist groups said some 8,000 people have disappeared, and accused government forces of staging gun-battles to cover up killings. The groups also say suspected militants have been arrested and never heard from again.
 The state Government has said most of the disappeared are young Kashmiris who crossed into Pakistani-controlled Kashmir for weapons training.
 The new report rejected any link between missing people and unidentified graves in the region.
 “The impression being given to the Commission that the unidentified dead bodies buried in these unmarked graves might be of the persons/civilians who have been reported to be victims of alleged forced disappearance is not correct and is far from truth.”
 The report said random DNA testing of the graves would take years since only about 16 labs in India had the capacity to do it.
 It could also “attract undesired media attention, cause prolonged trauma to the people and can also act as a trigger point/event for causing serious law and order disturbances,” it said.
 The report said no one had taken the Government up in its previous offer to undertake DNA tests on specific graves identified by the relatives of those missing.
 But Parvez said the APDP filed a case in December on behalf of 132 families asking for just that. It filed another 507 cases last month, he said.
 “Nothing has come out so far,” he said.

Lastupdate on : Wed, 5 Sep 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 5 Sep 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 6 Sep 2012 00:00:00 IST