May 15, 2003	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 12, 1424

NEW DELHI, May 14: India’s autonomous human rights watchdog called for an official explanation on Wednesday for the disappearance of people in occupied Kashmir.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) gave the Srinagar administration six weeks to give a full account of people missing and the measures it had taken to locate them and stop such incidents.

After that the panel “shall consider such further steps as it may need to take in respect of this matter”, NHRC Chairman A. S. Anand said in a letter to the government, which took office following elections in September and October.

The commission ordered the held state’s government to advise whether it had a system to record allegations of “enforced or involuntary disappearances”.

“It also asked about the measures that were being taken to prevent such disappearances, steps taken to book those who may have been involved in the cases and to provide justice to those who have suffered,” said an official at the panel.

The government in Srinagar said it would play ball with the NHRC in investigating the disappearances.

“We will fully cooperate with the (held) state’s human rights commission and give them as many officers as they want to investigate these cases,” law minister Muzaffer Beigh told reporters in Srinagar.

A privately run Kashmiri forum, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, claims that more than 8,000 people have vanished without trace since the beginning of the freedom movement in 1989.—AFP