Editorial
Ending impunity: on Hashimpura massacre
Delhi HC retrieves a lost cause and convicts those behind the Hashimpura massacre
The conviction of 16 personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary
(PAC) for the massacre of Muslims committed 31 years ago is a rare
instance of the justice system responding to the cry for accountability
and justice. By sentencing the 16 men to imprisonment for the remainder
of their life, the Delhi High Court has signalled an end to the impunity
they had seemingly enjoyed all along due to systemic delays and
perfunctory investigation. An hour after sunset on May 22, 1987, about
45 men from Hashimpura village near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh were
abducted in a PAC truck, most of them shot and their bodies thrown into
two canals. They were among more than 600 people rounded up by the
security forces after the brother of an Army officer was killed in
communal violence and two rifles were stolen by rioters from the PAC.
The police later established 38 deaths, but could not find the bodies of
22 of them. The U.P. Crime Branch-CID filed a charge sheet in 1996
against 19 PAC personnel, including Surender Pal Singh, commander of the
‘C-Company’ of the 41st Battalion. The prosecution case was backed by
the testimony of five men who survived being shot and thrown into
waterbodies. In 2015, the trial court acquitted all the 16 available
accused (three, including the commander, had died by then), as it did
not have evidence on the identity of the truck or the PAC men travelling
on it.
The en masse acquittal was a travesty of justice.
There was great concern that documents that could have helped nail the
accused had been weeded out. It is to the credit of the Delhi High Court
that it was not content with merely examining the evidence produced
before the trial court. Accepting a plea by the National Human Rights
Commission, it allowed additional evidence to be recorded by the trial
court even as the appeal was pending. The C-Company’s registers, with
records of the movement of PAC vehicles and the deployment of personnel,
provided the evidence to pinpoint both the truck that had left the
Police Lines, Meerut, and its occupants. These records were not
available to the trial court. Apart from bringing home the culpability
of the accused, the High Court concluded that these were custodial
deaths as well as targeted killings of people from a particular
community. The Hashimpura massacre case will be long remembered both for
the unconscionable delay the judicial system has become habituated to
and for the manner in which a case almost lost has been retrieved by the
higher judiciary. It is also a reminder that there is a constant need
for reassurance that policing and the criminal justice process in the
country will remain fair, and free from all manner of prejudice.
