WASHINGTON, March 8: Indian troops continue to use extrajudicial killing as a method to suppress insurgency in Kashmir, says the US State Department’s human rights report for 2005.

The US report points out that Indian authorities generally did not report encounter deaths that occurred in Jammu and Kashmir to the country’s National Human Rights Commission.

The State Department quotes a report by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons which claimed that as of June 2004, there had been 54 custodial deaths since the current Jammu and Kashmir state government assumed office in 2002.

The NHRC reported 136 deaths in police custody and 1,357 deaths in judicial custody countrywide from the beginning of 2004 till March.

The The NHRC recommended approximately $10,000 as compensation in five cases of death in police custody and $5,681 in the three cases of deaths while in judicial custody.

Quoting a report by the Asian Center for Human Rights, the State Department notes that in 2004 the Jammu and Kashmir government ordered 54 inquiries into alleged extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations in 2004 and completed only one.