The government's unwillingness or inability to investigate torture and deaths in custody in Jammu and Kashmir is evident from its response to the 28 reports of custodial deaths which Amnesty International listed in its March 1992 report, India: Torture, rape and deaths in custody. In contrast to the responses which Amnesty International received from other Indian states, the state government of Jammu and Kashmir denied all allegations that the victims had been killed in custody and dismissed all allegations of torture. In most cases, the Indian Government said Amnesty International had not provided sufficient details (details which Amnesty International has since provided), even though information had been published in the Kashmiri press, or by civil liberties groups or the cases to were pending before the courts in Jammu and Kashmir. Some of the cases to which the government failed to respond were described in detail in the Amnesty International report or in the international press.

The government's response to Amnesty International's December 1993 report, `An Unnatural Fate' - `Disappearances' and impunity in the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab, was equally disappointing. The bulk of the government's response -- received by Amnesty International six months after it had been sent to the government -- dealt with the Indian Government's views on the political differences between India and Pakistan about the status of Jammu and Kashmir and with human rights abuses by armed opposition groups. Although Amnesty International welcomed information in the government's response that may have clarified 15 of the 127 "disappearance" cases from Jammu and Kashmir, the government failed to respond to the vast majority of the allegations. It denied responsibility for having detained the victims, despite strong evidence to the contrary, often from eye-witnesses, and orders from the Jammu and Kashmir High Court finding convincing evidence of "disappearance". Significantly, the government failed to clarify any of the 11 cases which that report described in particular detail. In one case, that of Mohammad Shafi Dar, the government gave contradictory responses. It first acknowledged and then denied that he was taken into custody. There was no response at all to the 80 "disappearance" cases listed in the report from the state of Punjab. The Indian Government has not so far taken any steps towards implementing the detailed recommendations which Amnesty International made in that report in a nine-point program to halt "disappearances".