A ghost of a place
In Hashimpura, the throbbing sounds of the cottage looms resonate in the backdrop. Hashimpura was once a weaving hub for traders who came here from different States to purchase cloth. Most men here today work as daily wage labourers, small artisans or run stalls for a living. Zulfiqar is relatively better off and trades in tube-well spare parts.
Some of the survivors of the night were rescued by locals and the remainder by the State police. Clearly, their ordeal was not over. The policemen who found Usman threatened to poison him to death if he named the PAC in his statement. Usman initially gave in and for almost a month his family did not know his whereabouts as he was taken to Delhi for treatment. His five brothers had also been lodged in jail. The massacre took place in two phases. As the Delhi High Court judgment notes, the policemen stopped firing in the Gang Nahar after they noticed the headlights of an approaching vehicle and then moved the truck towards Hindon canal, stopping at its culvert. A PAC jawan, Leela Dhar, even sustained injuries after a ricocheting bullet hit him. After the first three persons were shot, the others in the truck screamed for help. As they tried to jump off, the PAC fired at them indiscriminately.
The PAC men then got down, opened the rear portion of the truck and finished the task. They dumped the bodies into the Hindon river. The incident left behind grieving families, including widows and mothers who lost their breadwinners. Hazra, in her seventies, lost three members of her family: son Naeem, who was only 14, her brother-in-law Zaheer, who worked the embroidery on clothes, and his son Javed, 13.
In several ways, the Hashimpura massacre is also testimony to the mental strength of the survivors and their families, who despite the odds, did not abandon hope for justice. The legal battle was supported by the victims themselves through donations and contributions.
“No political party helped us,” says Zulfiqar. The Samajwadi Party only gave us some economic relief in the form of ₹5 lakh compensation (in 2015). We did not get help in the same magnitude that we suffered. But we didn’t allow any politician to interfere.”
Their faith in the courts remained unshaken. Babuddin, another survivor, filed the first First Information Report at Link Road police station in Ghaziabad. Originally from Dharbanga in Bihar, he was visiting his uncle in the hope of finding a job in Hashimpura when he was also picked up. Today, he works as a weaver.
Recalling her numerous trips to the Tis Hazari court in Delhi for the trial, Hazra asks, “How could we answer our conscience if we had given up the battle?”
Zaibunnisa’s struggle was even harder. Her husband, Iqbal, who was 29, was also killed leaving her with three young daughters to look after. The youngest girl, Uzma, was born only two days before the incident.
Holding a photograph of Iqbal, a handsome young man with a neat moustache and neatly packed black hair, Zaibunnisa becomes emotional. “We had been married for five years. Our dreams were also not complete. My daughters did not experience the love of a father,” she says.
Iqbal was shot in the head. The family never got to see his body but identified his clothes. For Zaibunnisa, it meant starting life afresh by sewing and doing labour work. Today she lives alone in a house gifted to her by a son-in-law. All her girls are now married. Her eyes well up as she recalls life with Iqbal. “He didn’t do anything. He was scared of the police and never stepped out of Meerut,” she says, recalling that tragic separation.
Targeted killings
The Delhi High Court pronounced the case as “targeted killings” of Muslims and a custodial killing. The judgment assumes significance in the context of impunity in custodial death cases and police brutality. Despite being accused of such a grave crime, the PAC men continued to be in service. The Hindu spoke to four of the convicted PAC men, who had claimed in court that they were not present when the killings happened. One of them, Niranjan Lal, 64, who was a section commander then and now retired, claims his innocence. He says that he and his team did get into the truck but were asked to drop off at the Meerut Police lines, deposit their weapons and go back to their tents.
Lal says that as a consequence of the case, he retired as head constable, a post he had been promoted to early in his career. “Had this case not come about, I would have retired as inspector. I would have never allowed it to happen. I thank God that I was not a part of such an incident,” he says. Lal and his three associates claim that they were made to drop off so as to avoid the lone Muslim among them, Samiullah Khan, from being a part of the operation as he could not be trusted, and to also avoid suspicion. Samiullah, from Deoria, corroborated this explanation.
The CB-CID, which was handed the probe, filed a chargesheet in the criminal court in Ghaziabad in 1996. The Delhi High Court noted in its order that over 20 warrants issued by the criminal court between 2000 and 2003 had failed to produce an outcome. The trial was later transferred to Delhi on the orders of the Supreme Court after the survivors and their families were not satisfied with the progress of the investigation, alleging bias. Charges were framed against the accused by the trial court in May 2006: there were 19 originally, but three, including platoon commander, Surendra Pal Singh, died during the trial. The charges filed were for murder, criminal conspiracy, kidnapping and disappearance of evidence, among others.
Retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, Vibhuti Narain Rai, who was then the superintendent of police of Ghaziabad, says that despite political parties which claim to be sympathetic towards Muslims coming to power, neither was a prosecutor appointed in the case for long nor was an investigation properly supervised. It was only in May 2014 that the statements of the accused were recorded. But a year later, all 16 PAC men were acquitted by the trial court, which noted that the evidence required to connect them to the killings was missing.
“When they got a clean chit, I thought there is nothing called law in India,” recollects Zulfiqar. The acquittal was challenged by the survivors and their families and the National Human Rights Commission was allowed by the court to seek a further probe. The High Court then allowed additional evidence to be recorded in the case. Rebecca Mammen John, counsel for the victims in the High Court, says the ‘General Diary’ entries kept by the PAC that marked the battalion in question moving towards Hashimpura, and the return entry were the evidence that really clinched the case.
However, she rues that there was no urgency displayed by even the judiciary to take the case forward despite it having been transferred to Delhi. While there were serious indications of a cover-up and destruction of evidence, a lot of evidence was also not brought forward and was at the PAC level, says John. But the larger questions, of conspiracy and culpability, still remain unanswered. Was this a standalone case of a few PAC men going berserk betraying their communal mindset? The senior-level officer prosecuted in the case was a sub-inspector.
“My 36 years of experience in the IPS tells me that he cannot take such a big decision. And even if he takes such a decision, his under-command will not obey,” says Rai. He believes the PAC wanted to “teach the Muslims a lesson” which is why they selected the healthiest of the lot.
John says there was “absolutely no evidence” on record to support the theory that it was a case of revenge killing: “There was no attempt on the part of the prosecution to find out if these men acted on the instructions of their superiors or political masters.”.
Back in Hashimpura, Hazra says the conviction has provided “dil ko sukoon (solace)”, but insists that the PAC men deserve death: “Those policemen kept their jobs, lived a normal life and groomed their children and their future and are going to jail when they are almost ready to die. And look at us!”
While the conviction has brought a sense of consolation, the survivors are still grappling with questions. Naeem, another survivor, has only one question: Were we targeted because we were Muslims?
Zulfiqar chips in and wonders, “There were many Muslim localities in Meerut they could have chosen. Why did they pick on Hashimpura?”
The question hangs in the air.
