INDIA: Ex-policemen get life term for 1987 massacre of Muslims

A court in India has sentenced 16 retired policemen to life imprisonment for murdering 42 Muslim men in Hashimpura village in Uttar Pradesh state’s Meerut district in 1987. On Wednesday, a bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel at the Delhi High Court reversed a lower court’s verdict, which had acquitted the accused. The […]

A court in India has sentenced 16 retired policemen to life imprisonment for murdering 42 Muslim men in Hashimpura village in Uttar Pradesh state’s Meerut district in 1987.

On Wednesday, a bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel at the Delhi High Court reversed a lower court’s verdict, which had acquitted the accused.

The judges called the massacre a “targeted killing” of unarmed and defenceless Muslims by the police.

“The case is yet another instance of custodial killing where the legal system has been unable to effectively prosecute the perpetrators of gross human rights abuses … A disturbing aspect of the present case is the targeted killings of persons belonging to the minority community,” the court ruling said.

On the night of May 22 in 1987, armed policemen rounded up dozens of Muslim men in riot-torn Meerut and shot them dead. Most of the bodies were found washed up in a water canal nearby.