NEW DELHI. Mar 2: Hundreds of people have disappeared after being arrested by • police or security forces in India's northern Kashmir state during a nine-year old insurgency. Amnesty International said Tuesday, reports AP.

In a report called. "If they are dead, tell us." Amnesty estimated there have been more than 800 unsolved disappearances since 1990. Ordinary people — lawyers, businessmen, teachers, labourers — disappeared and many had no links to the fighting between separatist militants and security

Government spokeswoman NJ Krishna said Tuesday she could not immediately comment on Amnesty's charges. In the past, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has acknowledged what he called isolated incidents of human rights violations by his security forces in Kashmir, but said his government was committed to rooting out abuse.

Amnesty said it had submitted a draft report to the Indian government in November 1998 and had offered to send an ex-

pert delegation to help locate some of the missing people. The government of India has yet to make a substantive response, Amnesty said in a statement.

Dozens of groups in the state are fighting for an independent Kashmir or for a merger with neighboring Pakistan. As many as 17.000 people have been killed since the fighting began. India accuses Pakistan of training and arming separatists, a charge Pakistan denies.

Amnesty said it did not underestimate the security problems in Kashmir where "armed groups with foreign backing nave committed terrible abuses against the common population." But this did not excuse the disappearances or absolve the government of the responsibility to trace the missing.

The report accused the state of obstructing justice and not prosecuting the guilty. Amnesty said it was not aware of a single disappearance case where those responsible were convicted and sentenced.

Instead, relatives of missing people were threatened and warned to give up their search, the report said.