Trapped in the Killing Fields
(Source: Praveen Jain)
Excerpts from the forthcoming book on the
Hashimpura Massacre by Vibhuti Narain Rai, IPS retired
Translated from the Hindi original by
Darshan Desai
Hashimpura – May 22, 1987
Time heals, indeed, but it sometimes drags
some dark nightmares into the recesses of the present and of the
future. That horrifying night in 1987 and the subsequent days are
etched on memory like a stone – it was something that overpowered the
cop in me. To such an extent that the intrigue in me just refuses to
pass over. Looking for the living among blood-bathed bodies strewn
around a canal and between ravines near Makanpur village on the Delhi-Ghaziabad
border in the dead of night – the intervening night between May 22 and
May 23 – with a dim struggling torchlight and ensuring one doesn’t
trample upon bodies, all still stream through mind like a horror film.
It was around 10.30 pm when I had just returned from Hapur; having
dropped District Magistrate Naseem Zaidi, I returned to my house – the
residence of Superintendent of Police. Just as I was reaching the
house gate, my car headlights hit a frightened and nervous
sub-inspector VB Singh, who was then in-charge of the Link Road Police
Station. I could understand there was something wrong in his area of
jurisdiction. I asked the driver to halt the car and I stepped down.
VB Singh appeared too scared to explain
coherently what exactly had happened. Whatever he said in stammered
voice and broken words was adequate to shock anyone. I could make out
immediately that the jawans of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) had
killed some Muslims near the canal crossing the road leading to
Makanpur. Why were they killed? How many were killed? From where were
they picked up? All this was not known. After several attempts to get
Singh to be more clear about the details, I drew up a narrative of the
incident like this: It was around 9 pm when VB Singh and his
colleagues sitting at the police station heard gunshots from near
Makanpur; they thought there was some dacoity in the village. In sharp
contrast to today’s Makanpur all dotted with malls and flashy housing
complexes, the Makanpur of 1987 was a barren sprawl of land. It was on
a single-track dirt road right through this barren land on which VB
Singh speeded his motorcycle towards Makanpur with a sub-inspector and
a constable sentry riding pillion. They had not reached even a few
metres on the road when a truck charged towards them at break-neck
speed and if Singh had not swerved his mobike off the road, the truck
would have knocked them down. Just as he was trying to control his
vehicle, Singh looked behind at the yellow-coloured truck with 41
written on it and some men in khaki uniform sitting in the rear. It
was not difficult for them to understand that it was the 41st
battalion of PAC. VB Singh and his cops wondered why was a PAC truck
coming from Makanpur at that hour of the evening and if it had any
relation with the gunshots they had heard. They started their journey
towards Makanpur.
It must have been hardly a kilometre’s
drive when what Singh and his colleagues saw was scary. They saw
bodies of people in pools of blood in the ravines around a canal and a
culvert much ahead of Makanpur. The blood was fresh and still oozing
out and spreading around. From what Singh could see from the
headlights of his mobike, there were bodies lying in the bushes, on
the canal banks and floating on the canal. The sub-inspector and
colleagues tried to figure out what must have happened there and could
not help finding a link between the speeding PAC truck, the gunshots
and the bodies. Leaving the constable with him behind to keep watch on
the spot, VB Singh and the sub-inspector then left for the
headquarters of 41st PAC battalion close to his police
station on the Delhi-Ghaziabad Road. The gate was closed and despite
much explaining and argument, the sentry there would not open. VB
Singh then came to me and I could gather that what had happened was
frightening and could have serious repercussions the next day, given
the fact that the neighbouring Meerut district was burning in communal
passions for the past few weeks and there was an uneasy calm in
Ghaziabad. I called up District Magistrate Naseem Zaidi first who was
just about to hit the bed and told him to keep awake. The next call
was to my additional SP and then to some deputy SPs and magistrates –
I asked all of them to get ready quickly. In the next 45 minutes we
were on our way to Makanpur, stacked in some seven to eight vehicles
and reached the spot near the culvert and the canal barely within 15
minutes. Makanpur village was just across the canal but nobody was
there – probably they were too scared to venture out. There were
indeed police personnel from Link Road Police Station, trying to
figure out things with their dim torchlights, which were too
inadequate. I asked the drivers of our vehicles to turn towards the
canal and put on their headlights. Although this spread light all
around, we still needed the torchlights for a closer look since there
was a thick foliage of bushes. What I saw then was the nightmare that
has stayed with me. Blood-bathed bodies, some immersed in the ravines,
some hanging from the canal embankments partly in water, partly
outside, some floating on the water. The blood had not even dried up.
Before the counting the dead and
extricating the bodies, I found it crucial to check if anyone was
alive and needed help. We fanned out in all directions to find out if
anyone was still alive; while checking this with our torches we also
called out aloud if someone was alive. There was no response. We even
shouted that we are friends and not enemies and were there to take the
wounded to the hospital. Still, no response – some of us got
disappointed and sat on the culvert nearby.
I and the district magistrate decided
there was no point spending time and it was necessary to chalk out the
strategy for the next day given that the neighbouring Meerut district
was burning in communal fire and this incident could flare up passions
in Ghaziabad the moment these bodies go for post mortem the next day.
So I instructed junior officials to oversee extrication of the bodies
and wrap up the necessary paper work while we would proceed to Link
Road Police Station to plan the next day’s security arrangements. No
sooner had we turned to go then we heard somebody coughing, we
immediately stopped in our tracks. I rushed towards the canal. We
worked the torches again and called out that we were indeed friends.
Then our lights zeroed in on someone convulsing a bit – here was
someone hanging between the bushes and the canal, half in water; it
was difficult to figure out at first if he was alive or dead. He was
shivering with fear and it took long to convince him that we were
there to help. The man who was to later tell us the bloody and
horrific tale of that night was Babudin. Bullets brushed his flesh at
two places, but there were no injuries on him. In fact, after being
helped out of the canal, he walked down to where our vehicles were
parked. He also sat down and rested briefly on the culvert.
Twenty-one years later, when I was
collecting material to write this book I met Babudin at the same place
in Hashimpura from where the PAC had picked him in 1987. He had
forgotten my face but the first thing he recounted on being introduced
was that I had taken a beedi from a constable to give him when he sat
on the culvert that night. Babudin told me that it was during routine
searches that a PAC truck picked up some 40 to 50 people and drove
them away. They all thought they had been arrested and would soon be
lodged in custody. While it appeared rather strange that it was taking
too long to reach the jail from curfew-bound streets, everything else
looked so normal that they had no inkling of what was in store for
them. But when they were de-boarded at the canal and were being killed
one after the other, they understood why their custodians were so
silent and why they kept on whispering into one another’s ears.
The story beyond this is a sordid saga of
the relations between the Indian State and the minorities, the
unprofessional attitude of police and a frustratingly sluggish
judicial system. The offences I lodged in the Link Road Police Station
of Ghaziabad and Muradnagar on May 22, 1987, met with many obstacles
during the last 23 years and are still struggling in various courts to
reach their logical conclusion.
I kept on thinking how and why a bloody
incident like this could happen? How could someone in his senses kill
another like this? And that too of a group of people? That too without
any enmity that spawns uncontrollable anger? There are many such
questions that confront me even now.
The answers to these questions lie in the
horrifying phase in which this incident occurred. The Ram Janmabhoomi
agitation that had been going for nearly a decade had hopelessly
divided the entire society. The agitation that was getting aggressive
by the day had especially made the Hindu middle-class incredibly
communal. The maximum inter-community riots after the country’s
partition happened during this phase. It was but obvious that the PAC
and the police could not have remained insulated from this social
chasm. Moreover, the PAC has been perennially accused of being
communal.
I had a long interview with VKB Nair, who
was the Senior Superintendent of Police during the initial days of the
riots in Meerut. From what he could distinctly remember 23 years later
when I met him was this poignant episode. Just the second or third day
after the riots started, Nair heard some commotion outside his house.
When he came out, he found the Muslim stenographer of his office with
his wife and children, all scared and crying. They were staying in
police quarters and the PAC jawans camping there were continuously
taunting them. That day if they had not fled with the help of other
colleagues, they could have been attacked and killed. Till the riots
subsided the stenographer’s family took shelter in the SSP’s bungalow.
Those days were so horrifying that when some Muslim prisoners were
taken to Fatehgarh jail from Meerut, they were killed inside by other
prisoners and warders.
Coming back to the incident near Makanpur,
I was intrigued that the killers went to this extent. They put their
rifles on the chest of unarmed hapless youngsters and shot them and
even after they fell on the ground shivering, kept on pumping bullets
in them to make sure they die. All this without knowing them, without
any personal enmity! Why? I have spent 23 long years in resolving this
conundrum, to understand the psyche of those who did it. And now when
I know the answers, I have got around to write this book. But it is
unfortunate that PAC’s Platoon Commander Surendra Singh, who is the
hero or the villain of the piece, is not alive and I will only
sparingly use the notes I took after spending hours understanding his
psyche that ordered a small team to execute this pogrom. I will not
use the details I got from him to avoid any allegation that I have
added or deleted facts to make my point. Similarly, the then
Commandant of PAC’s 41st battalion Jodh Singh Bhandari too
is not alive and I will not mention about the long interview I had
with him unless it is inevitable.
This saga is the repayment of a debt that
has weighed on my chest since the 22nd of May, 1987.