A court here has expressed concern over the deaths in the 1987 Hashimpura massacre and said it was "painful" to observe that several innocent people have been traumatised but the investigating agency failed to establish the identity of culprits.
The observation by the court of Additional Sessions Judge Sanjay Jindal came while it acquitted 16 policemen in the case of 42 people's massacre in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut city.
"It is very painful to observe that several innocent persons have been traumatised and their lives have been taken by the state agency, but the investigating agency as well as the prosecution have failed to bring on record the reliable material to establish the identity of culprits," the court said in its order which was made available to the media on Tuesday.
The court on Saturday freed 16 personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) from charges of murder, attempt to murder, tampering with evidence and conspiracy, by giving them the benefit of doubt for want of sufficient evidence about their identity.
The court observed that facts disclosed that several hundreds of people belonging to different areas of Meerut were arrested by PAC and other forces from Hashimpura on May 22, 1987, of whom about 40-45 people from Hashimpura were abducted in a yellow coloured PAC truck.
It noted that the abducted people were shot and thrown into the waters of the Gang Nahar in Murad Nagar and Hindon river in Ghaziabad.
Some of them survived, some died and some were still missing, the court observed.
But it has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused people facing trial were the PAC officials who abducted and killed the people from Hashimpura or the truck belonged to the PAC 41st battalion.
"All the circumstances relied upon by the prosecution to connect the truck number and the accused people are capable of raising some suspicion but the same have not been proved conclusively beyond reasonable doubt," the court said.
"The statements of the witnesses relating to identity of the truck and identity of the accused people are non-conclusive and do not inspire confidence."
The court said that virtually, there was no clinching evidence on record without infirmities on the circumstance relating to the identity of the truck and the accused.
The accused cannot be convicted on the basis of scanty, unreliable and faulty investigation which has gaps and holes, the court said.
The court observed that "not a single circumstance relied upon by the prosecution inspires confidence to establish the guilt of the accused persons".
There were 19 accused in the case. Three of them died during trial.
The killings had allegedly occurred during riots in Meerut when the victims were picked up from Hashimpura by personnel of the PAC 41st Battalion during a search operation.
A charge sheet was filed before the chief judicial magistrate's court in Ghaziabad in 1996. The case was transferred to Delhi in September 2002 on the order of the Supreme Court following a petition by the families of the massacre victims and survivors.
A sessions court here in July 2006 framed charges of murder, attempt to murder, tampering with evidence and conspiracy against all the accused.
