India, Sept. 11 -- The Indian soldiers descended on Bashir Ahmed Dar's house in southern Kashmir on Aug. 10, a few days after the government in New Delhi stripped the disputed Himalayan region of its statehood and launched a crackdown. Over the next 48 hours, the 50-year-old plumber said he was subjected to two separate rounds of beatings by soldiers.

They demanded that he find his younger brother, who had joined rebels opposing India's presence in the Muslim majority region, and persuade him to surrender or else "face the music."

In the second beating, at a military camp, Dar said he was struck with sticks by three soldiers until he was unconscious. He woke up at home, "unable to sit on my bruised and bloodied buttocks and aching back,...