The prosecution on Wednesday began final argument in the 27-year-old Hashimpura massacre case in Uttar Pradesh in which 16 personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) are facing prosecution for allegedly shooting about 42 youths and throwing their bodies into the Upper Ganga canal and the Hindon river in the Ghaziabad district.
According to the prosecution, these youths were arrested during a riot in the Meerut city in 1987. On May 22 that year, soon after the Friday prayers, the Army combed Hashimpura and other Muslim localities in the city. It arrested 644 people, of which 150 were from Hashimpura, and handed them over to PAC. The accused persons allegedly herded 50 youths from Hashimpura in a truck, took them to Muradnagar, shot them and threw their bodies into the canal and the river.
The case is being tried by an Additional Sessions Judge in the Tis Hazari courts. The final argument is the summing up of the trial proceedings. After the prosecution, defence counsel will get an opportunity to rebut the charges. Thereafter, the court will pronounce judgment in the case.
The State Government had filed a case against 19 PAC jawans in a Ghaziabad court in 1996. Three of them have since died.
All the accused persons are on bail and in service. The court had released them on bail, saying that being government servants, they would not abscond.
On the plea of the victims’ families, the Supreme Court had in 2002 had transferred the case the Tees Hazari district courts. The case is based on circumstantial evidence. Five of the youths who were shot but survived are now prosecution witnesses.
