20 years on, families of Hashimpura victims await justice

Lucknow, Sep 3 (UNI) Families of the victims of 1987 Hashimpura custodial killings today charged the Uttar Pradesh government with shielding the guilty policemen.

A delegation of the victims' families led by their advocate Vrinda Grover met the state Chief Information Commissioner Justice (retd) M A Khan and complained about the attitude of the police in giving out details on the development of the case under the Right to Information Act to them.

''We had sought the annual confidential reports (ACR) of the 19 Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel chargesheeted by the CID in the custodial killings...We were shocked to learn that their ACRs have no mention of the incident and most of them have been appreciated by their superior officers,'' said Mr Grover.

She claimed that while police had refused to hand over the ACR of platoon commander Surendra Pal Singh, ACR of another personnel was given without any details.

The advocate, who had been fighting the case in Delhi's Tis Hazari court since 2002, said, 19 personnel were suspended in 1995 when the CB-CID filed a chargesheet against them in the court.

''Singh was reinstated within hours of his application for the same.

The others were reinstated as the PAC required them for duties,'' she alleged.

''Singh was reinstated as he had claimed that following his suspension he was facing financial hardships...what about the families of those killed by PAC. The government has not provided any relief to them,'' she quipped.

The Chief Information Commissioner informed the delegation that the case would come up for a hearing this month.

In the year 2000, the families of those killed had moved a transfer petition in the Supreme Court as none of the accused had appeared before the Ghaziabad court. The case was then shifted to Tis Hazari court in 2002.

On May 22, 1987, 42 members of the minority community were allegedly shot dead by PAC men in Hashimpura area of Meerut.

The massacre took place during the communal riots that broke out in Meerut in May 1987. Apparently, the immediate provocation was the Rajiv Gandhi-led Union government's decision to open the Babri Masjid for worship by Hindus. In April several areas of Meerut city were affected by communal violence during the Muslim festival of Shab-e-Barat.

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.

They then shot some of them, and threw them into the canal. Four of those escaped the shots and one of them filed a first information report (FIR) at the Murad Nagar Police Station. The remaining men were taken in the truck to the Hindon Canal in Makanpur and shot.

Two of the persons who survived the gunshots lodged an FIR at the Link Road Police Station.

UNI