SRINAGAR: A human rights group in Kashmir said on Wednesday it had discovered some 1,700 unmarked graves linked to the region’s separatist conflict and called on authorities to launch an investigation.

The graves were found in cemeteries in 55 villages close to the Line of Control, the military line dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, according to the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian Administered Kashmir (IPTK).

“The graveyards investigated by IPTK entomb bodies of those murdered in encounter and fake encounter killings between 1990-2009,” Angana P. Chatterji, IPTK’s convener, said at a news conference, referring to the period of a separatist insurgency.

Nearly 90 percent of the graves were unmarked, she said.

Police dismissed the claims of the group, which is an independent rights organization operating in the Jammu and Kashmir state.

“We will investigate this report, but most of the bodies were likely those of Pakistan militants killed in encounters and are always buried as unidentified,” a police official, who asked not be identified, told Reuters.

Last year, the same rights group, said they had discovered nearly 1,000 unmarked graves in 18 villages in the same area.

Meanwhile, India’s home minister has said that the government was prepared to withdraw a “significant” number of troops from Kashmir.

The presence of Indian soldiers in Kashmir, especially in the Muslim-dominated valley, has long been a major source of tension in the region where rebels have battled New Delhi’s rule for two decades.

Briefing lawmakers in Parliament on Wednesday on the state of domestic security, P. Chidambaram noted that militant violence in the region had dropped in the past few years.

“I would take what appears to be a risky step of withdrawing a significant number of battalions of security forces in Kashmir,” the minister told members of Parliament, according to the Press Trust of India.

“We are now transferring more and more law and order duties to the Kashmir police,” the news agency quoted Chidambaram as saying.

Chidambaram, however, did not state how many troops would be withdrawn or give a timetable for their pullout.

In June, he made a similar pledge, announcing that India was ready to phase out the presence of a large number of its troops across Kashmir, but gave no time frame.