Evidence of physical torture in a series of children.

In a refugee camp for Kashmiris it was stated that children had been exposed to torture and ill-treatment; consequently, we decided to appraise the validity of such statements. Ten boys allegedly exposed to torture and 10 children who were said to have been ill-treated were interviewed and examined. The veracity of the individual statements about exposure was appraised through an assessment of the consistency between the history and the clinical findings. In all cases of alleged torture, the history was in agreement with clinical findings ascribed to torture. Torture methods included cuts with bayonets and burns with items easily available in any setting. In five of the 10 cases of torture, the scars were highly indicative of intentionally inflicted injuries, by their shapes, their presence in clusters and their localization in regions not normally exposed to traumatization. Nine of the 10 children allegedly exposed to ill-treatment had scars in accordance with their histories. In all cases, Indian security forces were said to have been responsible for the inflicted violence. The histories and the clinical findings were in accordance with results of examinations of adult victims of organized violence from the same region. On the basis of the physical evidence, in each case in agreement with the history, it is concluded that torture of children has occurred in Kashmir. Series of children with physical evidence of torture have not previously been described in the medical literature.