At 12:20 am on May 22, 1987, Babuddin, having escaped from the Hindol canal, registered FIR No. 110/87 at Link Road police station, Meerut. Two hours later, three wounded men were picked up from the Upper Ganga canal by a police jeep, and Murad Nagar police station registered FIR No. 141/87. One of the survivors, Qamruddin, died on the way. Mohd Usman and Mujibur Rehman were admitted to hospitals.
Two days later, the then home secretary (admin) ordered a crime branch probe based on the two FIRs.
‘Attempt to kill PAC’
In the probe report submitted six years later, the CID indicted 66 Provincial Armed Constabulary personnel. Later, the CID would recommend that only 19 of them be tried, while its chargesheet would put an objective to the PAC action — a preventive against riots.
In 1996, when the first chargesheet was filed, the state ordered prosecution of the 19 personnel based on the CID recommendation. “From the evidence it is clear that communal riots broke out in May 1987… A search was conducted in Hashimpura and other areas. Hashimpura is mainly a Muslim-populated area. On 21.5.87, some elements made a murderous attempt to kill PAC. The bad elements looted rifles from PAC… they killed Kumar Kaushik in the adjacent mohalla. In order to stop and control the riots, the decision of [conducting] search, arresting [antisocial] elements was taken by the district administration.” The chargesheet said the crime branch probe had shown that “this fact came into light that bullets were fired on the arrested persons while they were being taken into the truck from Hashimpura.”
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Army only ‘associate’ of police
On the Army, the chargesheet said, “The only responsibility of the Indian Army was to encircle mohalla Hashimpura. It means that Indian Army was working as a associate of the civil police. It was only helping the police.”
The chargesheet added that “some of the officials were knowingly concealing facts,” and “a polygraph test of the then magistrate, DSP, platoon commander and driver were conducted”. It added the test found that the platoon commander, the driver and the DSP “were telling lies on some points in respect of questions asked of them”.
Court kept waiting
From 1997 to 2000, not one accused appeared in Ghaziabad court. Six bail able and 17 non-bailable warrants were issued against the 19 PAC accused, who were in service. In May 2000, 16 of them surrendered.
In September 2002, the case was transferred to Delhi on a petition filed by victims’ families. For another four years, the UP government failed to appoint a prosecutor. In March 2004, the government appointed A S Kulshreshta but the victims challenged this, and Surendra Adlakha was then appointed.
In July 2006, the court fined the state Rs 5,000 after Adlakha failed to appear. It was in August 2006 that the court recorded the testimony of the first prosecution witness, Zulfiqar Nasir.
Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health.
His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award.
Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time.
Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More
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