An accused buys monument to a massacre

Not far away, there is a family of seven sisters and four brothers being supported by a widow, living from one meal to the next in a two-room tin-covered house in Khairpur in Meerut.

Their only earning member, the father, Abdul Rasheed, a fruit-seller, had been killed in the 1991 riots.The acquittal was not a normal one — the trials were yet to begin. But the state government withdrew the case “in larger public interest and communal harmony,” using one of the provisions in the law. The judiciary is left with no option but to acquit the accused.

Though Meerut’s history is chequered with communal clashes, this one has left an indelible mark on peoples’ minds. The riots popularly known as Nigar cinema riots had started on the day of polling when people were dragged out of the movie hall, shot at, beaten with sticks, hot rods and knifed.

Nineteen people had died, said official records, but eyewitnesses say that nearly 40 had lost their lives. The news of the acquittal is greeted with cynicism, anger or indifference. Ironically, it is the poorest of them all who have nothing to say on this. “How does it matter whether they kill them or leave them, my world had died the day my son died,” said Umar Jann, who is 60 now and had only one son, Mahfuz Ali.

With the compensation money (Rs 1 lakh), she managed to get her two daughters married. Two are still unwed. “What is the point in talking about it? This will just bring back old, dead, unpleasant memories,” she says. There are those who are not so cynical. “We will do something together now that we have heard about this acquittal. It is unfair because I have seen some of the accused killing people with my own eyes,” said Fahaim Ahmed, who had been left for dead after getting 18 knife wounds and being shot. “My house was also burnt, it was just God’s mercy that I survived, the person who came to save me is dead,” recalls Ahmed. He was an election agent that day and today runs a STD booth.

Then there are those whose anger over the years has been fuelled once again. “There is no law in the land. It is zulm to let them go scot free and if they were not the guilty then why were they accused in the first place?” says Ali Kambar, brother of Ali Rahmat who was killed. He was just 16 then and used to work in a metal factory and was trying to return home when the arson started. Defence counsel Anil Kumar Bakshi says that it is common for the State to withdraw the cases as the pendancy is so high. “With every new government, some cases are withdrawn and there is nothing illegal about it as the constitution has a provision for it,” he said.