This page summarises findings from a report documenting torture, including sexual torture. It states methods and medical consequences in clinical terms because the report does, and because vagueness here would be a kind of dishonesty. It does not reproduce individual testimony at length and uses no photographs of victims. If you would rather not read it, the dossier index is here.
The document
Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir was published on 20 May 2019 by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society. It runs to roughly 550 pages, documents torture by the Indian state since 1990 with context reaching back to 1947, and is built on 432 case studies.[1]
These are Kashmiri human rights organisations and this site names them as such. Two things should nonetheless be said about the document’s standing. It is the first comprehensive study of its subject, and nothing produced by any government has displaced it. And the man who coordinated the organisation that produced it, Khurram Parvez, was arrested under India’s anti-terror law in November 2021 and held for four years and seven months without his trial reaching the framing of charges. His case →
Who was tortured
The report’s finding on this point is the one that matters most for the argument, because it goes to what torture was for. If the overwhelming majority of those tortured were civilians rather than combatants, torture was not an interrogation technique that got out of hand. It was a method of governing a population — which is what the report’s title says.
What was done, and what it did to people
| Finding | Figure | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Died during or after torture | 49 | 11.3% |
| — of those deaths, caused by torture injuries | 40 | 81.6% |
| Suffered health issues after torture | 222 | 51.4% |
| — of those, suffering chronic ailments | 209 | — |
| Subjected to electrocution in the genital area | — | 29.4% |
| Survivors reporting impotency or other sexual disorders | 11 | 5% |
The recorded injuries include ruptured lungs and perforated liver and intestines. Victims were put through forced starvation and given little or no water while being tortured continuously, which caused kidney failure in many; some who did not receive treatment in time died. Survivors said they were given no medical care after torture beyond painkillers in some cases. Of the 222 who suffered lasting health problems, the report records that they have borne the costs of their own treatment without compensation.[2]
Documented methods include solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, sexualised torture including rape and sodomy, electrocution, suspension from a ceiling, and forced submersion of the head in water.
Who is named
Across the 432 case studies, Indian Army regiments are named 288 times. One regiment accounts for the largest share:
The report also records allegations against the Jammu and Kashmir Police, the Border Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force and other agencies.
What accountability followed
That figure is the whole accountability story in one number. Not twenty-seven convictions: twenty-seven cases that reached a commission which, in any event, has no power to compel prosecution of armed forces personnel without the sanction that Section 7 of AFSPA reserves to the Government of India — and which has never been granted. File 04 →
India and the Convention against Torture
India signed the UN Convention against Torture in 1997. It has never ratified it. Twenty-nine years later it remains among a small number of states in that position, and it has no standalone domestic anti-torture statute. Read alongside a 432-case archive in which 11.3% of documented victims died, the failure to ratify is not a procedural oversight.
The current record
This is not a historical file. On 24 November 2025 fourteen UN special-procedure mandate holders — including the Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards — recorded that among the roughly 2,800 people detained after the Pahalgam attack, some were “allegedly tortured, held incommunicado, and denied access to lawyers and family members”, and stated:[3]
We condemn reports of arbitrary arrests and detentions, suspicious deaths in custody, torture and other ill-treatment, lynchings, and discriminatory treatment of Kashmiri and Muslim communities.
UN Special Procedures, 24 November 2025
Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2026 records that in February a 25-year-old man “recorded a last message on video alleging that police tortured him”.[4]
Sources & notes
- Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir, 20 May 2019. All figures in this file are drawn from that report and are the report’s own findings across its 432 case studies.
- APDP/JKCCS, May 2019, on post-torture health consequences.
- UN OHCHR Special Procedures, UN experts alarmed by Indian counter-terrorism operations violating human rights in Jammu and Kashmir, 24 November 2025.
- Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026, India chapter.