Malyana & Hashimpura verdicts: The cop who made a difference

Meerut: In May 1987, two similar massacres – in Malyana and Hashimpura, barely 4 km away from each other -- were orchestrated on two consecutive days but the long court battles resulted in two contrasting outcomes. In one, “shoddy probe” led to the acquittal of all 39 accused, and in the other, 16 PAC personnel were convicted. The difference in the outcomes was because of one IPS officer, his prompt reaction as per the rulebook and his hard work.On Saturday, a Meerut court acquitted 39 accused in the 36-year-old Malyana massacre in which 72 people, all of them Muslims, were killed on May 23, 1987, after hundreds of armed locals and PAC (Provincial Armed Constabulary) personnel entered the locality and blocked all exit routes. Just a day earlier, a similar carnage had taken place in neighbouring Hashimpura, where a contingent of PAC had rounded up 42 men, all Muslims again, packed them in a truck and shot them dead near two water bodies in Ghaziabad.Vibhuti Narain Rai, a former IPS officer who was SP of Ghaziabad at the time of the killings had played a crucial role in the Hashimpura probe and then legal battle.“I was lucky to get 36 hours after the Hashimpura killings before the case was transferred to CB-CID (Crime Branch, Crime Investigation Department). In those crucial hours, I ensured that a proper FIR was filed, postmortems were conducted and documentation done despite immense pressure from above to dilute the case,” he told TOI.
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