[18] According to Human Rights Watch, despite threats by Islamist groups to women since 1990, reports of rape by militants were rare in the early years of the conflict.
[21] A 2010 US state department report blamed separatist insurgents in Kashmir and other parts of the country of committing several serious abuses, including the killing of security personnel as well as civilians, and of engaging in widespread torture, rape, beheadings, kidnapping, and extortion.
[19] According to the Human Rights Watch, the rape victims of militants suffer ostracism and there is a "code of silence and fear" that prevents people from reporting such abuse.
[27] According to a 1993 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, the security forces use rape as a method of retaliation against Kashmiri civilians during reprisal attacks after militant ambushes.
[38] An Amnesty International report in 1992 stated that rape is conducted during counter-offensives against militants as part of a bid to methodically shame local Kashmiri communities.
[43][44][45][46] The study also found that in comparison to many other regions experiencing conflict, such as Chechnya, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka, the number of witnesses to rape in Kashmir was far greater.
[49] Scholar Dara Kay Cohen from Harvard University lists the conflict in Kashmir, alongside Bosnia and Rwanda, as among the "worst" of the "so-called mass rape wars".
Human rights groups have documented many cases since 1990, but because many of the incidents have occurred in remote villages, it is impossible to confirm any precise number.
[54] Human rights groups state that 150 top officers, of the rank of major or above, have participated in torture as well as sexual violence and that the Indian government was covering up such acts.
[55][56] In 2016, Kashmiri human rights activist and lawyer Parvez Imroz has said that a vast majority of cases of sexual harassment by Indian forces in Kashmir go unreported.
According to journalist Freny Manecksha, who tried to document conflict-related rapes in Kashmir in 2012–2013, their remote location has left them more susceptible to sexual violence.
The conservative nature of Kashmiri society means that males are reputed by their communities as having failed in protecting the purity of their women if they have been sexually assaulted.
"[60] According to Hafsa Kanjwal in SAGAR research journal of University of Texas Austin, that since Kashmiri society wrongly heaps the blame of rape upon the victims, they continue to experience psychological problems and they accept the idea that they have been shamed and lost their purity.
[60] Molen and Bal observe that there is a societal trend to refrain seeking matrimonial matches in areas where incidents of rape are publicly known.
The report says that the authorities do not order a full inquiry or prosecute the perpetrators but instead seek to discredit the integrity and testimonies of the witnesses and doctors who provide the evidence.
[67] In 2016, JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar became the centre of controversy after speaking out on the rape of women in Kashmir by Indian security forces.
[37] Former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, in her address to the Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing in 1995, called the use of rape as a weapon of war in Jammu and Kashmir ''reprehensible'' and ''depraved''.
Separatist leader Shahidul Islam commented, "I know by merely giving statements, honour lost by our daughters, sisters and mothers cannot be restored.
[38] In the case of the February 1991 mass rapes in Kunan Poshpora, The New York Times reported that the "Indian Government issued a statement saying that the sexual assaults never took place.
"[66] Human Rights Watch also highlighted the fact in its 1993 report that despite the evidence of widespread sexual violence perpetrated by the Indian army and paramilitary forces, few of the incidents were ever investigated by the authorities and no prosecution of alleged rapists ever occurred.
[78] Skhjelsbaek states that the denial of rape by Indian authorities is systematic and the lack of prosecution allows acts of sexual violence to be perpetrated with impunity in Kashmir.
[36] According to scholars Om Prakash Dwivedi and V. G. Julie Rajan, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has enabled the Indian military and security personnel to commit war crimes with impunity.
[81] The Army sources maintain that "any move to revoke AFSPA in Jammu and Kashmir would be detrimental to the security of the Valley and would provide a boost to the terrorists.
"[82] As per AFSPA, Kashmiris who need to go to a civilian court to press charges against any security force personnel for human rights violations are required to first seek the permission of the Indian government.
[87] Dwivedi and Rajan point out that India's status of being allied with the US and other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council has provided it impunity to carry out crimes against humanity, such as mass rape, in Kashmir.
[27] In 2013, 50 women filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in order to reopen investigations of the alleged mass rapes of February 1991 in Kunan Poshpora.