The report — following a three-year investigation launched amid allegations of rights abuses by the army, paramilitary and police — is the first official acknowledgment that civilians killed in the two-decade conflict may have been buried in unmarked graves.

It stops short of confirming that suspicion, long alleged by rights groups, but says "there is every possibility that ... various unmarked graves at 38 places of north Kashmir may contain the dead bodies of locals."

Previously, officials have insisted that all the bodies were of militant fighters, as claimed by police when they were handed over to villages for burial.

The report says 2,156 unidentified bodies were found in single and mass graves in three northern mountainous regions, while 574 other bodies found in the graves have been identified as local residents.

The findings by the Jammu-Kashmir State Human Rights Commission are likely to deepen cynicism in restive Kashmir, where anti-India sentiment runs deep and most people want independence.