“To the living we owe respect; but to the dead we owe only truth.” —Voltaire
The newly released report by the Save Youth Save Future Foundation (SYSFF), presented as if it were a dispassionate study of unmarked graves in Jammu and Kashmir, is anything but objective.
Far from shedding light on one of the most tragic chapters of the conflict, it reads like a carefully crafted attempt at narrative management — one that seeks to obscure established facts, downplay serious violations, and repackage official versions of events as truth.
By selectively citing data, ignoring victims’ testimonies, and privileging police files over independent investigations, the report attempts to erase crimes that demand impartial scrutiny. These are not minor infractions, but grave violations of international law — enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and mass burials of unidentified persons.
Such crimes have been documented for decades by Kashmiri civil society, international rights groups, and even statutory bodies of the Indian state. To overwrite those findings with untested claims is not only misleading but dangerous.
Any assessment of the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir must begin by acknowledging the lived reality of its people. For more than three decades, Kashmir has been one of the world’s most militarised zones. Civilians live under constant surveillance, subject to night raids, arbitrary detentions, and the ever-present fear of disappearance. Torture, custodial deaths, and collective punishments — including the destruction of homes and livelihoods — have left deep scars on Kashmiri society.
This is the context in which the debate over mass graves must be situated.
These graves are not abstract statistics; they are the silent markers of untold suffering, the resting places of men and boys who never returned home. For their families, they represent an absence without closure — a husband who never came back from work, a son who vanished after being picked up at a checkpoint, a brother who disappeared during a search operation.
To label such individuals posthumously as “foreign militants” without evidence is to deny families both dignity and truth.
SYSFF’s claims Versus the Record
SYSFF claims to have “identified” more than 90 per cent of the 4,056 graves it studied in four districts as belonging to “terrorists”. This claim stands in stark contrast to the findings of multiple independent and official investigations.
The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC), in its 2011 report, documented 2,730 unmarked graves in just three districts. Crucially, it admitted that not a single body had been identified by police or civil authorities.
The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) and the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) painstakingly documented more than 6,000 unmarked graves across all ten districts of the Valley between 2008 and 2012. Their work included hundreds of victim testimonies, affidavits, and on-the-ground surveys.
The International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (IPTK), in collaboration with forensic experts, demonstrated how graves contained civilians with signs of execution — blindfolds, gunshot wounds to the head, and no identification records.
The European Parliament Sub-committee on Human Rights, during its 2009 on-site hearings, concluded that the Indian state was failing to fulfill its obligation under international humanitarian law to identify the dead and inform families.
Against this backdrop, SYSFF’s sweeping assertion that almost all the bodies are “terrorists” is extraordinary. It is made without DNA testing, without exhumations, without judicial enquiries — the very processes mandated by Indian law under the Criminal Procedure Code (sections 174–176). In effect, it rewrites history without evidence.
Funding and Credibility
A deeper look at SYSFF’s own financial disclosures raises serious questions. More than 90 per cent of its funding comes from the J&K Police Wives Welfare Association and the Indian Army’s Goodwill Fund. This is not an incidental detail. It means that the very institutions implicated in the disappearances and mass burials are bankrolling the “research” that absolves them. In no serious jurisdiction would such a conflict of interest be tolerated.
Unlike independent rights groups, which often face harassment, raids, and the freezing of accounts, SYSFF operates with full state backing. Its sudden emergence and quick access to official files suggest less a grassroots initiative and more a top-down project of damage control.
What is missing from SYSFF’s report — and what no amount of official labelling can erase — are the voices of Kashmir’s families of the disappeared. Since the 1990s, the APDP has collected over 1,400 testimonies from relatives of men who vanished after being taken into custody.
Mothers, fathers, wives, and children continue to gather every month in Srinagar, holding faded photographs of their loved ones. Many of them have submitted blood samples for DNA testing, but the authorities have never matched those samples with the bodies in mass graves.
Some stories are seared into public memory. In 2003, two young men from Uri disappeared after being picked up by the army. Years later, when two graves were exhumed in 2012, forensic experts confirmed the remains belonged to them. Both had been blindfolded and shot in the head. Their families’ long wait for the truth was vindicated, but such exhumations remain the rare exception rather than the rule.
International Legal Obligations
International law is clear on how states must deal with unidentified remains and suspected cases of enforced disappearance. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights obliges India to investigate every custodial death. The Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death (2016) requires independent exhumations, forensic analysis, and public identification of remains. The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has repeatedly warned that labelling the disappeared as “terrorists” without judicial determination violates the presumption of innocence.
By ignoring these standards, both the Indian state and SYSFF deepen the wound. The dead remain unacknowledged, the families remain without answers, and perpetrators continue to enjoy impunity.
SYSFF’s report cannot be separated from the broader politics of denial that have marked New Delhi’s approach to Kashmir. For decades, the government has sought to delegitimise Kashmiri grievances by framing them as security threats rather than rights violations. Reports of torture are dismissed as propaganda, demands for justice are labelled “anti-national”, and now, even the graves of the disappeared are reclassified as “evidence” of militancy.
This narrative management is not accidental. It is a strategy to shield the state from accountability — both domestically and internationally. By producing an “NGO report” that confirms the official line, the government can claim that civil society itself has validated its version. In reality, this is a hollow exercise, one that collapses under the weight of independent evidence.
Why Truth Matters
Truth-telling is not an academic exercise. For the families of the disappeared, knowing the fate of their loved ones is a basic human right. It allows them to grieve properly, to perform last rites, and to find some measure of closure. For society at large, confronting the truth is essential to prevent repetition. Impunity breeds repetition: silence allows crimes to continue.
By contrast, suppressing the truth not only dishonours the dead but also corrodes the living. It erodes trust in institutions, deepens alienation, and signals to security forces that they can act without consequence. The cost is borne by every Kashmiri who continues to live under occupation, never knowing if they will return home at night.
Three simple facts remain unchallenged:
1. The SHRC, India’s own statutory body, confirmed thousands of unidentified graves and demanded DNA profiling.
2. Independent Kashmiri and international organisations have provided evidence of civilians executed in custody and secretly buried.
3. No systematic forensic investigation has ever been conducted, despite repeated calls from the UN, European Parliament, and civil society.
SYSFF’s report ignores all of this. Funded by police and army bodies, it re-labels the dead without evidence, presenting speculation as fact. It is not truth-telling but truth-burying.
Voltaire’s dictum is a call to conscience: “To the living we owe respect; to the dead we owe only the truth.” The people of Kashmir continue to demand the truth. Suppressing it through propaganda does not make the graves disappear. It only deepens the injustice, prolongs the suffering of families, and stains the moral credibility of those who choose denial over accountability.
If there is to be any hope of reconciliation, the truth about Kashmir’s mass graves must be confronted — not buried under the comforting fiction of official narratives. Until that happens, the cycle of repression will continue, and the promise of justice will remain a distant dream.
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