In August 2026, Indian authorities continued to commit grave human rights violations in Indian-administered Kashmir. Indian authorities continued their ongoing systematic campaign of mass detention, detaining over 2,500 people, and their campaign of collective punishment through raids, cordon-and-search operations and property expropriation. Indian authorities increased military deployments, surveillance, checkpoints, searches, and coerced students, public sector employees and others to publicly participate in Indian nationalist ceremonies. In a rare case of punishment of any kind, a military tribunal expressed “severe displeasure” for a brigadier’s custodial killing of three Kashmiri civilians through torture.
Numerous Kashmiri journalists, human rights defenders, activists, and dissenters continue to be arbitrarily detained, including human rights lawyer Mian Abdul Qayoom—illegally imprisoned for over two years (821 days). On September 2, 2026, the preventive detention of scholar Shafat Wani—who was illegally imprisoned for almost a year and a half (510 days)—was quashed.