Court to hear Hashimpura massacre case every day from Feb 8

New Delhi, Feb 5 (UNI) The Hashimpura massacre case, in which personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary in Uttar Pradesh allegedly shot dead 42 people in May 1987, will be heard every day from February 8, ASJ N P Kaushik ordered today.

The case was transferred from the Ghaziabad court to Tis Hazari on the orders of the Supreme Court. The Uttar Pradesh government had allegedly shown little interest in pursuing the prosecution of the 19 accused police personnel.

The Hashimpura massacre occurred during the riots that broke out in Meerut in May 1987. Apparently, the immediate provocation was the Rajiv Gandhi-led Central government's decision to open the disputed place of worship at Ayodhya to devotees.

Communal violence rocked Meerut during the festival of Shab-e-Barat in April. But the Congress government in U.P., headed by Vir Bahadur Singh, withdrew the security forces soon after the violence subsided.

Meerut exploded again, catching the State government unawares.

Curfew was imposed and PAC personnel conducted searches in several localities in the city. On May 22, 1987, they booked hundreds of youth from Hashimpura, though there was no rioting in that area of Meerut city.

Nineteen PAC personnel, under platoon commander Surinder Pal Singh, allegedly took about 50 of them, most of them daily wage labourers and poor weavers, in a van from Hashimpura Mohalla in Meerut to the Upper Ganga canal in Murad Nagar, Ghaziabad, instead of taking them to the police station.

According to the prosecution, they then shot some of them, one by one, and threw them into the canal.

UNI