Recent investigations into the %u201Cdisappearance%u201D of Abdul Rahman Paddar, a carpenter who went missing in December, have shown that he was picked up in Srinagar by a special operations squad of Gandherbal district police and later killed. Although Abdul Rahman had been reported missing by his family, the police identified him as a Pakistani militant and claimed that he had been killed in an armed encounter. Abdul Rahman Paddar%u2019s body was exhumed and identified by his relatives last month.
Four other bodies were also exhumed, including that of a street vendor and a Muslim priest, who had all %u201Cdisappeared%u201D last year. Eight policemen, including two senior officers, have been arrested for these murders. A judicial inquiry has been ordered into these fake %u201Cencounter killings,%u201D which are executions staged to look like self-defense. Human Rights Watch documented many such cases in its September 2006 report, %u201C%u2018Everyone Lives in Fear%u2019: Patterns of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir.%u201D
%u201CRecent revelations have confirmed what families in Kashmir have been alleging all along,%u201D said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. %u201CThe Indian security forces have %u2018disappeared%u2019 countless people in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989 and staged fake encounter killings while fabricating claims that those killed were militants.%u201D
The Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons in Jammu and Kashmir (APDP), fearing that their relatives might have met the same fate, is now calling for an
