WASHINGTON, July 31: A US Congressional report, released on Thursday, says that the United States had serious reservations over key issues like New Delhi’s role in the Gulf and Central Asia and a potential US role in resolving the India-Pakistan dispute.

The brief, released by the Congressional Research Service, underscores a number of negative factors that undermine the otherwise optimistic picture of US-India relations.

“Throughout the 1990s, regional rivalries, separatist tendencies and sectarian tensions continued to divert India’s attention and resources from economic and social development,” the report observes.

It points out that the Indian state of Gujarat was the “site of horrific communal conflict” in 2002, which killed more than 2000 people, mostly Muslims.

In Kashmir, the report says, Indian troops fired on peaceful demonstrations, forcing many Kashmiris to join separatists.

During the state recent elections in Kashmir, the report observes, the voter turnout remained low, although many ‘voters were herded to polling stations by security forces.’

The report also presents a dismal picture of the human rights situation in India. Human rights violation, it points out, include extensive societal violence against women; extra judicial killings, faked encounter killings, excessive use of force by security forces, arbitrary arrests and incommunicado detentions in Kashmir and several northeastern states.

It also cites torture and rape by agents of the government; poor prison conditions and lengthy pretrial detentions without charge; forced prostitution; child prostitution and female infanticide; human trafficking and caste-based discrimination and violence, as examples of other human rights violations in India.

The report quotes the US State Department as saying that “many of these abuses are generated by a traditionally hierarchical social structure, deeply rooted tensions among the country’s many ethnic and religious communities, violent secessionist movements and the authorities’ attempts to repress them, and deficient police methods and training.”