Among the 16 Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) men recently convicted by the Delhi High Court for the Hashimpura massacre of 1987 were four who claimed that though they boarded the truck carrying 42-45 Muslims, they got down at the Meerut Police Lines, where the PAC was camping, and had no knowledge of what happened afterwards.
Constable Samiullah Khan was one of them. Talking to The Hindu from his home town Deoria in east Uttar Pradesh, Samiullah, who has till November 22 to surrender and serve life imprisonment, claims he is innocent and did not participate in the massacre.
Recalling May 22, 1987, when the PAC abducted and killed 38 Muslims of Hashimpura, Samiullah, who was a 23-year-old constable then, claims he and three others were instructed to get off midway.
He claims this was because Platoon Commander Surendra Pal Singh did not want to carry a Muslim, him being the only one in the platoon, during the operation.
When the truck travelling from Hashimpura reached the Meerut Police Lines, Samiulllah claims the platoon commander ordered his Section Commander Niranjan Lal and three others to get down. He says the truck was packed and some of the PAC were forced to stand in the rear.
“They provided us no reason and asked us to deposit our rifles and retire to the tents. Though I did not hear it myself, I later came to know that the three others were made to get off because of me... to avoid suspicion,” said Samiullah, who is still serving the police and posted in Gorakhpur.
Samiullah says they were told that the truck carrying the Muslims rounded up in Hashimpura would be taken to the district jail. “We did not know where they went and what they did,” he said. “We are innocent and suffering for the past 31 years, without any promotion, and my increment was also stalled.”
Samiullah also claims that after the incident his superiors had told him that “nothing will ever come out of the case”.
Niranjan Lal, 64, of Etah, also provided a similar sequence of events and claimed innocence.
As a consequence of the case, he says he was never promoted and retired as a head constable, the post to which he had been promoted early in his career in 1983. He, however, regrets that the massacre took place and does not deny the role his colleagues allegedly played.
“I thank God that I was not a part of it. I would have never allowed it to happen,” said Mr. Lal, adding he had not received any specific orders to shoot.
In court, the four accused had relied on the testimony of Gulesh Ali, who was posted as a mess munshi at the Meerut Police Lines on that day. The HC rejected their claims. Wasiq Khan, counsel for the four, said the court did not consider their evidence and said the four men had a case that was separate from the rest of the PAC now convicted.
The HC in its judgment on October 31 said, “The portion of his [Gulesh Ali’s] testimony, which talks of four of the accused alighting from the truck, does not appear to have the support of any other witness or corroborating evidence.”
The court said that nobody from the Meerut Police Lines had been examined to corroborate the claim made by the four PAC men, now convicts, that they returned to the police camp before 9 p.m. on that night. Referring to the general diary entry of the PAC, which clinched the conviction, the court said the entry at 9 p.m. “makes it appear that all of the accused returned in the truck URU-1493 at that time”.
The convicts are planning to appeal against their conviction.
The Director-General U.P. PAC was not available for comment.
