Hashimpura Massacre : Why did they make us wait for 28 years?

The survivors of the May 22, 1987 Hashimpura massacre, the families of the 42 victims, lawyers for the victims and civil rights activist on Tuesday denounced the court verdict that acquitted all 16 Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel accused of custodial killings.

Given by the Tis Hazari sessions court in Delhi on March 21, 28 years after the killings of Muslim men from Hashimpura mohalla in UP's Meerut city, the verdict let off all 16 PAC personnel giving them benefit of doubt as, according to the court, the prosecution could not establish the identity of the shooters.

That night in May, 28 years ago, in a Meerut reeling from bloody communal riots, the army and then the PAC rounded up all able bodied men of Hashimpura, only sparing children under 13 and the elderly. The PAC loaded them into a truck, made them sit on the floor with men armed with .303 rifles guarding them, not letting them look up. They were driven to first the Ganga canal in Murad then the Hindol river canal, shot at both in ans outside the truck, and thrown into the canal. Five survived, despite bullet injuries, or not knowing how to swim, hanging on desperately to bushes growing by either canal. One of them Babuddin, managed to get an FIR filed within 24 hours of the shootings, at the Link road thana near Hindol river canal.

These five survivors -- Babuddin, Muzbir-ur-Rehman, Mohammad Naeem, Zulfiqar Nasir, Naeem Arif -- turned witness for the prosecution when the trial finally started in 2002, after the Supreme Court transfered it to Delhi after it had languished for long in Ghaziabad.

On Tuesday, the witnesses and the kin of other victims said that they had been reduced to joke with this verdict. They were accompanied by lawyers Vrinda Grover and Rebecca John, activists Prof. Apoorvanand Jha, Kavita Krishnan, Justice Sachchar who led the enquiry into the massacre, among others.

"If they had to deny us justice they should have said so long ago. Why did they make us wait 28 years," said Riazuddin, who lost his elder brother Qaimuddin that night. Riaz, then 18, was among those sent to jail. In their late 40s now, the survivors had been in their late teens when they were picked up.

The survivors described how they were held down by their arms and legs and shot at. Mohd Naeem escaped bullets as he was under the corpse of his neighbour Qaimiddin, drenched in his blood and thrown into the water. Rehman had to swim to safety with a bullet in his shoulder.

Many of the families have lost their former means of livelihood post the riots. Most of them are migrant labourers dependent on the power loom business in the district.

'Deliberate suppression of evidence'
Vrinda Grover, counsel to the victims, said that state does not make mistakes, this verdict was an act of deliberate suppression of evidence collected by the prosecution. She recalled the mishandling of case properties as an example. The .303 rifles that y used that night were redistributed among the same PAC battalion, and thus could not be produced on time when the court asked for them. The truck in which many of the men were shot was examined years later. Even though forensics showed bullet holes that corroborate witness testimonies, the judge refused to accept that.
She added that though the witnesses had identified Yasin, the first man to be shot, in photographs, being taken away by the PAC, the court still had doubt over the personnel's identity.
"It is the responsibility of the state to identity the culprits," said Justice Sachchar, indicting the entire process.

Onus on survivors
Though the court accepted the testimonies as consistent and without major deviations, it put the onus of identifying the perpetrators on the men and boys being shot at on pitch dark. Grover argues that the CBCID investigation could have easily identified perpetrators by going over PAC records. As she and the witnesses gear up for an appeal in the High Court, hoping the judiciary will rise to the occasion, the men and women of Hashimpura find themselves as betrayed by state forces as it were 1987 all over again.