- By Dr. Shujaat Ali Quadri
A recent report on “mass graves” in Kashmir has unravelled a long-propagated narrative of Pakistan and its multi-headed machinery that “civilians massacred by Indian security forces lay buried here and there in Kashmir”. The report busts this myth and heralds that foreign and local militants sent or nurtured by Pakistan since 1947 onwards are sleeping in graves strewn in four bordering districts, Baramulla, Kupwara, Bandipora in north Kashmir, and Ganderbal in central Kashmir.
This report, however, also doesn’t cover up the fact that thousands of Kashmiris vanished in the course of the conflict that raged in the late 80s, and the blame for hundreds of deaths and covert burials has been on the Indian armed forces. Many such cases have been subject to investigations. But Pakistani designs to portray Indian security forces as killing machines and that the militants trained on its soil haven’t run rampant in the Kashmir valley stands starkly exposed by this detailed report.
The report, titled ‘Unraveling the Truth: A Critical Study of Unmarked and Unidentified Graves in Kashmir Valley’, is based on the study conducted by the Kashmir-based NGO Save Youth Save Future Foundation (SYSFF). It has been prepared by a team of young researchers led by Wajahat Farooq Bhat, Zahid Sultan, Irshad Ahmed Bhat, Anika Nazir, Muddasir Ahmed Dar, and Shabir Ahmed. The team painstakingly inspected and documented 373 graveyards in all four districts. The investigation spans a mammoth 6-year period from 2018 to 2024.
Using a rigorous methodology that included GPS tagging, photographic documentation, oral testimonies, and an analysis of official records, the study aimed to provide evidence rather than relying merely on unverified accounts that some of these previous studies did, and raised unnecessary alarm. Besides, techniques of comprehensive forensic investigation and modern DNA testing were applied to make the investigation thoroughly scientific and authentic.
The field investigation community engagement formed a crucial component of the research methodology, involving semi-structured interviews with a diverse cross-section of stakeholders. These include local clerics and members of Auqaf mosque committees, gravediggers with decades of experience, families of local terrorists and disappeared persons, long-term residents with knowledge of local burial practices, and former terrorists who had surrendered or were released.
The research team documented a total of 4,056 graves. As many as 2,493 graves (approximately 61.5 per cent) were identified as belonging to foreign terrorists who were killed in counter-insurgency operations. Around 1,208 graves (approximately 29.8 per cent) belonged to local terrorists from Kashmir who were killed in encounters with security forces. Interestingly, researchers found 70 graves that were traced to tribal raiders who invaded Kashmir in 1947.
Pakistani Propaganda Unveiled
Pakistan, both its state and civil society, has been waging information warfare against India, exploiting the perception that civilians are being killed in Kashmir. Islamabad particularly raises issues of extra-judicial killings, often calling them part of a larger genocide, in Jammu and Kashmir. A well-networked army of Islamabad-linked government organs, activists, think tanks, media organisations, and social media peddlers have been spinning reams of renewed versions of the same allegations that Indian security forces have been massacring Kashmiris.
When the Indian government read down Article 370 and 35A to normalise Kashmir with the rest of India, prominent Pakistani politicians and people linked to the Army had claimed that Srinagar hospitals are brimming with Kashmiri civilian casualties.
These perfidious claims exploded as soon as they were made, as the media toured the whole of Kashmir to find “dead Kashmiris”. It came across none. Locals definitely had their genuine grievances, but they didn’t complain of state excesses as Pakistani propagandists had desired.
Besides Pakistani narrative builders, a section of the Kashmiri media has also been pro-secessionists. They also highlight burning issues of Kashmiris and their sufferings, which are also a result of Indian security forces enjoying impunity under the cover of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). But often, they also raise issues like “fake encounters” in the killings of militants, even before a proper investigation unearths the complete truth. Such an “encounter” narrative has actually been a major weapon of Pakistani propaganda machinery to conjure a miserable picture of Kashmir. It puts the entire Indian security apparatus under dock and gives fodder to international organizations to create noise about Kashmir being a conflict zone where civilians are being killed and buried without any accountability of perpetrators and proper identification of those killed and laid to rest.
The latest findings have lifted the curtain on this duplicitous understanding.
The SYSFF places the graves firmly in the context of Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir that it has always denied, even though occasionally claiming it in a fit of boast. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the ISI redirected its jihadi infrastructure toward Kashmir. “Pakistan provided logistical support, funding, arms, and facilitated the movement of both Kashmiri militants and Pakistani militants across the Line of Control”, it has been said by many scholars and authors.
Groups like Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Jaish-e-Mohammed transformed the Valley into a battlefield. Foreign fighters carried no documentation; many were buried as “unidentified terrorists.”
The report underlines that the shift from local political dissent to cross-border jihadist terrorism fundamentally altered the character of the conflict. The graveyards are, in fact, Pakistan’s signature on the soil of Kashmir.
The SYSFF bluntly observes: “Militant groups and separatist networks… actively exploited the imagery of unmarked graves to fuel propaganda, making sweeping allegations without credible substantiation”.
Come to the latest findings on graves. As mentioned above, over 60% of them are Pakistani nationals, some of them dating back to 1947. Pakistan has never claimed them as its own. It didn’t do so with its soldiers who died in Kargil, even though their deaths were reported in the Pakistani newspapers. Similarly, Pakistan hasn’t claimed militants who are its nationals and who died while fighting its proxy war in Kashmir.
Interestingly enough, there has not been any significant response from the Pakistani side to the report on mass graves. Perhaps it dreads the truth: The graves are not monuments to Indian brutality; they are the unintended epitaphs of Pakistan’s jihadi terrorism.
The Author is the National Chairman of Muslim Students Organisation of India (MSO). He writes on a wide range of issues, including Sufism, Public Policy, Geopolitics, and Information Warfare. He can be reached at