(Mohd Asim is Senior News Editor, NDTV 24x7)
On Saturday, a Delhi court acquitted 16 Uttar Pradesh police personnel accused in the 1987 Hashimpura massacre, in which more than 40 Muslims were killed in cold blood. The policemen have been set free on account of lack of evidence, and the failure of the state government to establish the identity of the accused policemen.
Here is what happened on that fateful night of May 22, 1987.
Riots had broken out in Meerut in April 1987, following the Rajiv Gandhi government's decision to open the locks of the 17th-century Babri Masjid. After a brief lull, riots restarted in May in Meerut. Curfew was imposed and Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel conducted searches in several Muslim localities in the city. On May 22, 1987, they booked hundreds of Muslim youth from Hashimpura, though there was no rioting in that area of Meerut city.
The court judgement acquitting all the accused has come a good 28 years after the incident. And now, we are made to believe that no one actually killed those over 40 innocent Muslims. A typical case of justice not just delayed, but also denied.
Vibhuti Narain Rai, who was the Superintendent of Police, Ghaziabad when the massacre took place, said in his book 'Combating Communal Conflicts--Perception of Police Neutrality During Hindu-Muslim Riots in India' that most of the police personnel posted in Meerut saw the riots as a result of Muslim "mischief", while ignoring or overlooking the role of Hindutva groups in fanning them. They claimed that Meerut had become a "mini-Pakistan" because of "Muslim intransigence" and that it was necessary to teach the community a lesson.
Here is a chilling account from his book of the police barbarity that unfolded on that dirt track by the canal.
Politically, too the killings reverberated loud. The Congress that was in power in UP has never won Meerut since then and also could not make it back to the power in the state. Mufti Mohd Sayeed, who today shares power with the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir, resigned from the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet after the incident.
Successive state governments headed by SP and BSP never showed any interest in taking the case to its logical end. This was evident in the case being transferred to Delhi in 2002 on the orders of the Supreme Court.
Saturday's order that set the killers of Hashimpura free is a stark commentary on how the institutions of state conspire to deny justice to its citizens. May be in this case there was no "collective conscience to satisfy".
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