Hashimpura Massacre: Survivors want UP to challenge verdict

With the ruling Samajwadi Party maintaining silence on the Hashimpura verdict, the survivors and families of the victims of the 1987 massacre in Meerut, are now seeking an audience with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, with a hope that the state government takes up their case in the High Court as the 28-year-old legal battle in lower court has drained them “financially and mentally.”

Akhilesh will be visiting Meerut on April 4 to lay the foundation stone of Mulayam Singh Medical College on Hapur road, as per Meerut’s District Magistrate Pankaj Yadav. “We have not been informed of any plans of CM to visit Hashimpura,” the DM said.

The survivors are hoping to hand over their memorandum to the CM at the foundation stone laying programme. Additional Sessions Judge Sanjay Jindal at Delhi’s Tees Hazari court, had on March 21 acquitted 16 Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel of charges related to the killing of 42 Muslims, who were picked up from Hashimpura, giving them benefit of doubt for want of evidence.

“We just hope that the state government files an appeal in the High Court against the verdict,” said Zulfiqar Nasir, one of the five persons from among about 50 who were rounded up by the PAC but survived the massacre of May 22, 1987.

The victims’ demands include making public the Gyan Prakash Inquiry report, which was commissioned to look into the massacre, and financial assistance to the families.

Source:: Indian Express