Hashimpura Massacre case - Justice delayed as well as denied

I read about this gruesome incident very recently when the court verdict on this case was delivered after a long agonizing wait of 27 years. The Hashimpura massacre happened on 22nd May 1987, when 42 Muslims were brutally massacred by police during communal riots. It was the Congress party government in power back then, that government and all the subsequent governments did nothing to pursue this case seriously so that the culprits are punished. Rather, they all tried each and every method to protect the culprits and the ultimate result of all this was that the court acquitted all sixteen Uttar Pradesh police officers who were accused in this case. So even after a long agonizing and painful wait for justice relatives of victims and survivors received a tight slap on their face from our judiciary, investigating agencies, and all political parties who claim to care about these victims. It seems no one killed those 42 people, that massacre happened on its own. If this is not a sad and pathetic state of affairs, then I wonder what it is? And please make no mistake of assuming that there is some particular political party that is to blame for this shameful episode, all of them are equally involved in sabotaging this investigation and protecting the culprits.

The scariest part of any riot is when police start taking sides based on the identities of the people involved in it. Police are supposed to be impartial and perform their duties of protecting citizens of their state. It is always dangerous for any state when its police force or investigating agencies become communal or racial. When they start taking sides then one side is bound to face some dire consequences irrespective of what they have done, and this is what we see in this case. Police turned their guns on those innocent people whom they were supposed to protect. The justice system should have been more diligent when one of its departments is accused of committing a serious crime like murder, but it failed miserably. Also, this is not the only case that failed to deliver justice to victims, there are quite a few cases like this some of them were not even reached to court, and they were not even reported in the media. This is such a horrible record of human rights violations. When political parties (in power as well as in opposition) and investigating agencies form an illegitimate alliance then no court can punish culprits as it won't have enough evidence to punish the culprits. In this particular case, no political party whether in power or in opposition bothered to pursue this matter seriously. Most of India was not even aware that any such massacre happened, it was ignored to that extent.

There is no point in playing the blame game here, it is a useless exercise, and it only benefits political parties. They just love to play the blame game, it happened in the 1984 riots case and the 2002 Godhra riots case both were covered widely by national and international media. Most culprits, especially state employees (policemen and politicians) accused in such cases are released for the lack of evidence. This is terribly sad and shameful but this is the bitter reality. Even after so many people get killed for no fault of theirs no one gets punished for these heinous acts. Where is the justice and where is the law? I don't think there will be huge public outrage like it was in the case of Jessica Lal murder case. Unfortunately, such massacres fail to generate widespread public sympathy as people react based on who got killed by whom. Nowadays, people choose their sides based on their own religion and this really makes me feel sick. Many also justify such killings directly or indirectly just because people who got killed didn't belong to their own religion. I hope someday we all learn to respect every human life irrespective of their age, gender, race, or religion. Until that day, we have to bear the pain and frustrations of reading about such incidents and the failure of our entire political class to do something to control such incidents. I hope families of victims and all survivors of such tragedies get some type of closure so that they can forget these horrific incidents and move on with their lives.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Links:
1. क्यों हार गया हाशिमपुरा?
2. A Young Muslim's Take On Hashimpura, The Forgotten Massacre
3. Hashimpura killings: 10 of those freed still in UP Police