02, Feb 2016

Mohammad Ali
Meerut, February 2, 2016
Documents on PAC deployment were ‘weeded out’.
The Uttar Pradesh police destroyed documents that could have helped to prove the involvement of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel in the Hashimpura massacre of 1987, even while the trial is still pending, it has now emerged.
Last year, a Delhi court acquitted 16 PAC men, who were among the 19 charged with abducting 42 members of the minority community in May 1987 during the riots in Meerut. The victims were picked up from the Hashimpura Mohalla in a truck, and taken to a nearby canal, where they were gunned down, according to the prosecution.
The 29-year-old Hashimpura massacre case collapsed due to “insufficient evidence”. Three of the 19 PAC men died in the course of the trial.
A letter written by the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Meerut, a copy of which is with The Hindu, shows the documents were “weeded out” on April 1, 2006. In the letter to the Crime Branch of the State Crime Investigation Department (CID), the SSP said it was now impossible to make available documents related to the deployment of the PAC personnel on the day that the massacre was allegedly carried out. The matter was being heard in a Tis Hazari court at time the documents were destroyed.