Thread by @Rammyyyyy_

34 yrs after custodial massacre of Muslims by goons in uniform, justice is incomplete!

The survivors and members of the families of those killed in the #HashimpuraMassacre organised themselves to move the SC in 1995 to make the report public &to prosecute those indicted in it...

The SC refused to intervene, and instead asked the petitioners to approach the HC. The case remained unresolved in the HC, but the state government finally bowed to pressure in 1996 by filing criminal charge sheets against 19 personnel of the 41st batallion of the PAC...2/n

More than 64 senior officials were found guilty by the Crime Branch-CID, but the state govt claimed that departmental proceedings were sufficient against most of those found complicit in the crime. Not a single senior off is included in the charge sheet,..3/n
#HashimpuraMassacre

Far from being punished, all senior police& civil officials in charge of that area at that time have flourished in their careers. Not only did the state govt choose to indict just those foot soldiers whose fingers pulled the triggers, and not those who ordered them to do so,..4/n

even the 19 accused personnel of the lower ranks of the Provincial Armed Constabulary were not arrested despite 23 non-bailable arrest warrants being issued against them between 1997 and 2000. The accused were in active service throughout this period,...5/n
#HashimpuraMassacre

but the government pleased in court that they were "absconding".
During these years, political formations of almost every hue alternately held office in the state capital Lucknow, but nothing changed for the survivors of #HashimpuraMassacre...6/n

It was finally in May 2006, 19 years almost to the day after the #HashimpuraMassacre, that charges were finally framed against the accused. Three of the accused men had died, the remaining 16 appeared in every hearing in the cramped untidy Tis Hazari courtroom and listened...7/n

and listened tensely to the statements of the survivors, but they still continued in active service. Despite continued changes of govt in UP, this did not change.
This clearly shows the double standards of "secular parties" whenever it comes to giving justice to Muslims...8/n

The case did get dismissed by the trial court on March 2015. The magistrate accepted that killings of these persons by men of the PAC did indeed transpire. However, the court acquitted every one of the 16 accused policemen on grounds of benefit of doubt...9/n
#HashimpuraMassacre

It is this verdict that the Delhi HC has overturned in October 2018 stating: “We have proceeded to reverse the judgment of the trial court as the evidence is of a clinching nature. “This is a case of targeted killing of members of the minority community by state forces...10/n

The epic battle of the impoverished working-class women &men of Hashimpura for justice to prosecute the men who killed their loved ones, nd their interminable court vigils all these three decades, reflects their iridescent but heart-breaking faith in India's justice system...11/n

But even today, 34 years after the custodial massacre by goons in uniform, justice is still only partial. The foot soldiers will perhaps spend their remaining lives in jail. The 64 officers found guilty by the Crime Branch-CID of ordering or enabling the killing,...12/n

those who destroyed the evidence, those senior political and police leaders who protected the killers, all have escaped punishment...13/n

India continues to stand profoundly diminished. #HashimpuraMassacre