A HUMAN rights organisation monitoring the fate of student hostage Paul Wells and three other Westerners today said they were confident the men are still alive.

Mr Nazir Gilani, of the Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human Rights, claimed the Indian Government and Paul's Al-Faran Kashmiri-separatist captors would have been quick to capitalise if the four Westerners had come to any harm.

He said: "The Indian Government has already produced a video telling the story of Hans Christian Ostroe, the Norwegian beheaded by Al-Faran. This was produced to discredit Al-Faran. Al-Faran would have used the deaths to prove that they mean business."

Paul, of Bracken Close, Feniscowles, Blackburn, has been held for almost ten months.

Reports that Indian soldiers had been digging for his grave in the Anantnag region of Jammu Kashmir are now not believed to be true.

Officials were said to have been tipped off by a prisoner linked to the political wing of Al-Faran.

Today the Foreign Office said they were still checking the authenticity of the claims and suggestions that Paul, 25, Middlesbrough-man Keith Mangan, German Dirk Hasert and American Donald Hutchings had been killed in December.

But Mr Gilani said the information may have been gained using harsh interrogation techniques.

He added: "When people are tortured, they will say anything to make it end.

"The Indian soldiers may simply have been digging trenches."

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