(The Times of India)
'87 Meerut massacre: Trial from today
Manoj Mitta
[ 14 Jul, 2006 2352hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
NEW DELHI: A Delhi court will on Saturday begin the trial of 16 police personnel alleged to have massacred 42 Muslims from Meerut way back in 1987.
One of the six survivors of the massacre — a communal atrocity allegedly by security forces themselves — is due to start deposing before additional sessions judge N P Kaushik.
But the main accused, Surender Pal Singh, platoon commander of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC), narrowly escaped trial as he passed away early this year.
He was in fact the third of the original tally of 19 accused persons to have died during the protracted pre-trial proceedings in Ghaziabad and Delhi.
It was because of such inordinate delay that the Supreme Court had shifted the case from Ghaziabad to Delhi four years ago at the instance of victims, who expected the proceedings to be fast-tracked in the Capital.
This was the first case of communal violence to be transferred out of a state. But unlike in the Best Bakery case, which was transferred from Vadodara to Mumbai in 2004, the transfer of the Meerut massacre case is yet to yield results.
The massacre by PAC personnel is alleged to have taken place in the course of the communal riots that took place in Meerut in 1987, following the Rajiv Gandhi government's decision to open the gate of the Ram Janambhoomi temple.
According to the charges framed by the sessions court in May, the PAC team under Surender Pal Singh arrested about 50 Muslims from Hashimpura, a locality in Meerut, and drove them in a truck to Upper Ganga Canal, Murad Nagar, where some of the victims were shot and thrown into the canal.
The remaining were taken to the Hindon Canal in Makanpur and similarly shot and thrown into the canal. Those custodial deaths created a sensation across the country, prompting the Uttar Pradesh government to refer the case to its CB-CID. Even then, the case was held up at every stage for some reason or the other.
The CB-CID took seven years to complete its investigation and obtain the necessary sanctions to prosecute the PAC personnel.
After the chargesheet was filed in 1994, the case could not make any progress till 2000. The police failed to enforce warrants even though court issued them as many as 23 times over six years.
When the Supreme Court shifted the case to Delhi in 2002, the case remained dormant as the Mulayam Singh government, despite its "secular" image, delayed the appointment of a special public prosecutor (SPP).
The first SPP appointed in 2004 was removed as he was found to be under-qualified. The victims are not happy even with the current SPP, S Adlakha, who was appointed last year.
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