#dnaEdit: Blatant injustice

The acquittal of 16 Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel in what has come to be known as the Hashimpura massacre, is a sad day for Indian democracy. On the night of May 22, 1987, nearly 50 Muslim men from Hashimpura were picked up by a PAC platoon, and 42 of them shot dead in cold blood and dumped in two canals in neighbouring Ghaziabad. It defies any civilised norm that the PAC personnel, deployed to contain the festering communal violence in Meerut, were driven to such extreme communal passion that they decided to take the law into their hands. Only the 1919  Jallianwala Bagh massacre, perpetrated by the British army, perhaps, rivals the Hashimpura massacre in horror and scale. There are several documented instances of the law-and -order machinery aiding perpetrators and failing to protect communal riot victims. In Hashimpura, the police did far worse: playing provocateur as well as perpetrator. For a people who gave themselves a Constitution that pledged them justice, social, economic and political, Hashimpura is a betrayal of all that modern India claims to stand for. This is the reason why the higher courts must intervene to redeem the injustice and deliver justice. That is, if justice can be salvaged.

When trials take 30 years to complete, the first casualty is evidence. The death of important eyewitnesses and the failure to seize and safeguard physical evidence has irretrievably prejudiced the Hashimpura case. It took nearly nine years, until 1996, for the charge sheet to be filed. The Supreme Court shifted the trial to Delhi in 2002, but the apathy continued even under the Supreme Court’s nose, as had happened in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots cases.

The Delhi trial court took another four years to frame charges  and another nine years to decide the case, by which time three of the accused had also died. Such a long time-frame for convicting men in uniform accused of murder and dereliction of duty makes it clear that they have been shielded by the State. It also raises suspicions that the murderers may not have been acting independently. The Meerut violence played out against the backdrop of the Rajiv Gandhi government opening the locks of the Babri Masjid complex to allow Hindus to worship and the communalisation of society and politics that ensued. A PUCL fact-finding team led by retired Justice Rajinder Sachar that visited Meerut in the immediate aftermath of the 1987 riots, noted the PAC’s role in worsening a communally fraught situation. While members of both the Hindu and Muslim communities indulged in wanton acts of murder, arson, firing, and looting, Sachar accused the PAC of singling out the Muslims for humiliating treatment, raids, unconstitutional arrests and deliberately aggravating tensions.

Unless the accused is absconding or evidence is inconclusive, there is no reason that charge sheets cannot be filed in 90 days, trials completed in one session and the judgment delivered within two months, as mandated by the Criminal Procedure Code. Given the high rate of pendencies, it is not realistic for all ongoing cases to stick to this timeline. But in important cases, the State must take a proactive stance. Twenty-six years after Meerut was on a boil, communal violence returned in 2013 to Western UP in neighbouring Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts. As in 1987, mischief-makers, among them politicians too, leveraged isolated incidents and rumours to fan riots that left nearly 50,000 people, mostly Muslims, homeless. Most of the criminal cases registered, including 27 cases of rape and several other cases of instigating riots, are still languishing in court. Meanwhile, the accused are roaming free and some have even occupied elected office. The stage is once more set for history to repeat itself.