Police detain kin seeking bodies of slain Kashmir civilians

By AIJAZ HUSSAIN
Associated Press

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Dozens of relatives of two civilians killed in a gunfight in Indian-controlled Kashmir are pleading with authorities to return the bodies so they could bury them. Police say four people, including two civilians and two suspected rebels, died Monday night in a raid by government forces on alleged militants in Srinagar. Police says the civilians died in the crossfire but witnesses and their families say Indian troops used them as human shields during the standoff. Indian authorities later secretly buried the bodies in a remote northwestern village as part of a policy that started in 2020. Since then, authorities have buried the bodies of hundreds of suspected rebels and their alleged associates, including civilians, in unmarked graves.