A district court in Meerut last week acquitted all 41 accused in the May 23, 1987 massacre in Maliana village outside the town, in which 68 Muslims were killed by a mob that allegedly included personnel of the Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC). The Maliana killings took place a day after the massacre in the Hashimpura neighbourhood of Meerut town, in which PAC personnel shot dead at least 38 Muslims in their custody. In October 2018, the Delhi High Court sentenced 16 former PAC personnel to life imprisonment for the “targeted killing”. Like in the case of the Maliana accused, a trial court had acquitted the Hashimpura convicts earlier in 2015, saying their guilt had not been established beyond doubt. Months of tensions The massacres in Hashimpura and Maliana took place at a time when communal tensions triggered by the reopening of the locks of the Babri Masjid in February 1986 were boiling over in Meerut district. Retired police officer Vibhuti Narain Rai, who was then superintendent of police in Ghaziabad, said communal incidents had been taking place in the district for months before the killings. “Historically that area had seen multiple riots. Before the Hashimpura and Maliana cases, several incidents led to communal tensions and sporadic rioting. It is difficult to pinpoint a single incident that eventually led to all this,” Rai told The Indian Express. Senior journalist Qurban Ali, who reported on the Maliana case, identified a shooting incident involving a police officer, and a quarrel during a religious festival among the major incidents that led to heightened communal tension. “On April 18, 1987, during the Nauchandi fair in Meerut, violence broke out after a local sub-inspector was said to have been struck by a firecracker while on duty, and he opened fire, killing two Muslims,” Ali told The Indian Express. “Then, there was a religious sermon near the Hashimpura crossing organised by Muslims, close to the venue of a mundan event held by a Hindu family at Purwa Shaikhlal. Arguments ensued over playing songs, and this led to a quarrel,” Ali said. As riots broke out, curfews were imposed on many localities, and more than 400 policemen were deployed across the town, The Indian Express reported at the time. Several companies of PAC were called in to help the local police. However, tensions and incidents of communal violence continued. Hashimpura killings The situation escalated greatly on the night of May 19, 1987, when riots broke out in several police circles including Lisarigate, Lal Kurti, Sadar Bazar, parts of Civil Lines, and Medical College. By May 22, the day of the massacre in Hashimpura, more than 50 people had been killed in the district, reports in The Indian Express noted at the time. On May 22, the PAC rounded up 42-45 Muslim men and took them away in a truck. The men were shot dead with .303 rifles, and their bodies were dumped in the Gang nahar (canal) and Hindon river. Massacre in Maliana Maliana, a village located about 10 km west of the centre of Meerut town, had a population of 35,000 at the time, including about 5,000 Muslims who lived close to each other. According to reports published in The Indian Express, the violence took place after a mob accompanied by PAC personnel arrived in the village on the day after the Hashimpura massacre, ostensibly to search for weapons and other arms. While the Muslim residents of Maliana alleged that PAC personnel opened fire at men, women and children for no reason, officials claimed at the time that there was “resistance and firing from the roof-tops so the police had to take action”. (The Indian Express, May 27, 1987) In his book Hashimpura 22 May: The Forgotten Story of India's Biggest Custodial Killing (translated from the Hindi), Vibhuti Narain Rai wrote: “In.Maliyana, a violent mob of Hindus and personnel from the PAC had mercilessly killed dozens of Muslims. The only difference was that here the victims were not under police custody, unlike those in Hashimpura. During the 1987 riots [in Meerut], Maliyana became more infamous than Hashimpura.” Three days after the incident, reporters from The Indian Express witnessed an “atmosphere of gloom and helpless” in Maliana. “Sobbing men folk and crying women and children sit huddled in groups. The fear is writ large on their faces,” they reported. The reporters also saw hundreds of bullet marks on doors and walls of the locality, which the residents claimed the PAC personnel had fired. More than 80 men were missing from Maliana and nearby Sanjay Colony, Islam Nagar, and Multan Nagar. By May 24, local people had buried 16 bodies, which were handed over to them following post mortem examinations. There were allegations that more than a dozen bodies had been thrown into a well, which was later filled with mud. Salim Akhtar Siddique, who claimed to have been witness to the killings, told The Indian Express at the time, “We had surrendered with raised arms after two hours when we realised that no one would survive. All the men, women and children had gathered near the village pond and begged for their lives.” Siddique said the area had never witnessed communal riots earlier, not even during Partition. “We don’t know what happened this time,” he said. An elderly resident of the village told The Indian Express that a day before the incident, local Hindus and Muslims had held a meeting, in which Muslims had been assured that “nothing would happen”. Both communities had donated money for the upcoming Eid celebrations, the report said. Subsequently, more than 100 people were arrested in connection to the Maliana violence. The Indian Express reported that following the incident, authorities decided to withdraw the PAC and local police pickets, and to instead deploy the Army in Maliana.
