[3] The building, of colonial origin, was initially a government guest house to accommodate visiting bureaucrats, in "serene surroundings" - the exclusive Gupkar Road[4] on the banks of the Dal Lake in Srinagar.
On takeover by the paramilitary Border Security Force in 1989, it was named Papa II "in an attempt to keep the compound's new purpose nominally confidential".
[6] According to William Dalrymple, Papa II was a centre into which ...large numbers of local people, as well as the occasional captured foreign jihadi, would "disappear."
[7]A method of interrogation by which bodies of suspects were placed under heavy rollers caused at least 250 deaths through acute renal failure at one Srinagar hospital alone, according to Pankaj Mishra.
[5][9] It is unknown how many deaths occurred at Papa II, the most intensive centre of its kind: on the tenth of every month, the relatives of some of the disappeared stage a public protest near the building, demanding information on their kin from the authorities; they claim about 10,000 have gone missing during the years of militancy.