Vibhuti Narayan Rai
‘It had to happen!’- with this proclamation begins the wonderful love saga ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ by the great storyteller of our times, García Gabriel Márquez. The author was so convinced of love’s indomitable spirit that his hero’s long wait would end with his beloved being finally found, that he began his novel with this line. What should I call my pessimism that I remembered this sentence regarding the recent court verdict on Maliana massacre. The only difference was that here the judgment was to come not on love, but on violence by the state, and on hearing that, my mouth blurted out – this was bound to happen.
What happened
In the sultry summer of May 1987, when most parts of the city were under curfew, May 22 was the beginning of many tragedies. The search started at Mohalla Hashimpura at 4 pm, which ended at 9.30 pm at Makanpur village canal in Ghaziabad. There and before that, more than three dozen Muslims taken into police custody on the Muradnagar canal were shot. It was only after three decades of legal battle that the guilty PAC workers were punished in this case.
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There is no verified figure of those who died in the incident which lasted from May 22 to May 24, 1987 (File photo: BCCL)
The victims of the other two incidents were not so lucky. Some Muslim prisoners were taken from Meerut to Fatehgarh Jail, where about a dozen of them were beaten to death by jail officials and inmates. Lawsuits were filed and some workers were also suspended, but gradually all were reinstated. They completed their jobs, retired with honor and went home. No one knows what was the fate of those cases. In these days, a little away from the Meerut urban area, something happened in Maliana, a village of that time, which was the worst of all. There is no verified official figure of those who died in this incident which started from 22 May till 24 May. Yet more than seventy people are believed to have died. Its court verdict has just come. As decided from day one, all the accused were acquitted. The saddest part of the whole episode has been that all the stakeholders or stake holders of the Indian state have failed miserably in this episode.
Those days I was doing my job 60 kms away from Meerut and was watching the entire development with interest. Therefore, I have no hesitation in writing that none of the political leadership, police, civil administration, judiciary and press have lived up to the expectation that is expected of them in these difficult times. Here I will especially talk about the role of the then political leadership and the police.
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No role of the police was mentioned in the FIR (File photo: BCCL)
Every child in Meerut knew that the Maliana massacre was perpetrated by the police, especially its armed wing, the PAC. A commandant of PAC was also heard bragging in front of the police officers deployed there in those days – he has taught such a lesson that his generations will remember – despite this, the FIR that was written, there is no mention of the police in it. Not surprisingly, the person in whose name the FIR is registered has given a statement in the newspapers that the police had made him sign on a plain paper at the bottom and wrote a text on the top in his mind, in which the names entered in the voter’s list were sorted out. 39 people were made accused. For this reason, such names also came in this list, which were dead till 1987. There were differences in the panchnamas and postmortem reports of the dead persons.
This case dragged on in the court for years. How serious the state was regarding this can only be understood from the fact that for years the FIR itself was said to be missing. When the High Court fixed the deadline to end it, the FIR was also received. As per the court verdict, important witnesses did not appear before him. It was not proved that those who were said to be part of the mob had also participated in the violence. When no role of the police was recorded in the FIR, then naturally no testing of their weapons was done. Then how could the connection of the bullets found on the bodies of the dead with their killers be proved? There were many unanswered questions, which were intentionally left so as not to penalize anyone.
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More than 70 people were killed in the Maliana incident (File photo: BCCL)
profit seeking politics
I have a complaint with the political leadership that it let the police do everything and never showed the required seriousness in combating the riots. On many occasions, it seemed that he was looking for his electoral gains in Meerut incidents. Rarely was there an understanding that an institution in a secular nation cannot be allowed to conduct itself in such a way that a large section of the people feel that they have no stake in the state. Once this feeling takes hold, it can have very serious consequences. Don’t know how many people would have lost their chair if such a loathsome incident happened in any civilized society. Shameful that nothing has happened in our self-styled Jagadguru society so that we can be at least that much assured that it will not recur in future.
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own.