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The 1987 Meerut Riots were a series of violent communal disturbances between Hindus and Muslims in the northern Uttar Pradesh town Meerut which occurred from March to June 1987, [1] [2] which resulted in the death of more than 350 people. [3] Nearly half of that number was made up of almost 150 Muslims from Hashimpura and Maliana who were killed by members of the UP Provincial Armed Constabulary in actions after the initial rioting.
Meerut had been the site of five serious communal clashes over the prior two decades, the most significant being in December 1982, that saw the deployment of the PAC and its alleged involvement in the violence that resulted in a reported 150 dead. [4]
The tension started in 1986 when the black seal Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was opened by the Government which led the Muslim extremists to make some hateful speeches. [5] It was reiterated by Hindus that Babri Masjid was constructed by Babur after the demolition of a Ram Mandir back in 1528 A.D. [6]
Inflammatory speeches were made by Muslim extremist leaders, which created communal tensions in the area. This resulted in Muslims organising a rally held in March 1987 by the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee, a non-government organization representing Muslims which increased communal tensions in Meerut and ultimately led to communal clashes in April.
On 14 April 1987 during a local fair a drunk police officer on duty was struck by a fire cracker and opened fire killing two Muslims. On the same day in Hashimpura a clash broke out when local Muslims objected to a Hindu family playing film music over loudspeakers during a sermon at the nearby masjid. A shot was fired by a Hindu and Muslims retaliated by setting Hindus shops on fire, resulting in fighting.12 people died in these riots in which the PAC had to be called in, but were withdrawn in the first week of May, barely 10 days before the riots broke out. On May 14 two bombs exploded in Mohalla Chhipiwara and Chhatta Tagi Hussain, followed by another explosion in Mohalla Kainchian two days later. [7]
On the evening of May 16, a Hindu named Ajay Sharma was shot and killed, apparently in a renter-owner land dispute. Various rumours ascribing a communal aspect to the killing would spread in the next two days increasing tensions. [8] Local police and a contingent of the PAC attempted to arrest a suspect in Hashimpura two days later. Entering the neighborhood at Iftar during Ramzan, the timing of the raid was seen as provocative and resulted in Muslim residents clashing with police nearby Imliyan mosque. According to People's Union for Civil Liberties, a Muslim girl was crushed under a police jeep. This resulted in the police firing at the mob which killed several people. [4] [7] The first person killed for communal reasons however was a Hindu store owner, Shashi Bhushan. [9]
In the subsequent communal fighting, on the morning of the 17th, at least 15 and likely many more people were killed and hundreds of business were burnt in the vicinities of Hapur Road, Golekuan, Pilokheri, Lakhipura, and Shyam Nagar. In Pilokhari several cloth printing factories owned by Hindus were burnt by the mob, burning about a dozen guards inside the factories. At Lisari Road the farm of Nepal Singh was attacked, 6 persons said to have been burnt to death. [7] A car was also attacked by the Muslim mob, killing the occupant a famous local Hindu doctor named Dr Prabhat, whose father, local CPI leader Professor Harpal Singh helped found the Hashimpura Legal Advisory Committee. [5] [10]
Although a curfew was introduced and the army deployed by the afternoon, arson continued as did violence, including to areas like Shastri Nagar, Saket and Civil Lines that had not been affected by the nearly dozen acts of communal violence over the previous two decades. In fact, Shastri Nagar was one of the worst affected areas, with a reported 33 (local allegations raising as high as 100) killed in the locality during the initial rioting. [11] At Meerut and Fatehgarh jails prisoners clashed, resulting in five deaths at the former and six or seven deaths at the latter. [4]
The death of the Hindu shop owner led to Muslims being targeted during the retaliatory violence by the police and the Hindu rioters who killed hundreds in the next few days as the riots spread to Modinagar. [12] Across the border in Delhi, eight were killed. Many Muslims were burnt alive by a Hindu mob in villages on the outskirts of Meerut city. [5] Estimated property loss was around 50 crores. Hindu and Muslim doctors faced the wrath of their own community for treating patients of the other community. [6] In the subsequent days, numerous people died in further communal violence, two in a shootout and four in a bomb blast at Bulandshahar, while another blast in Hapur did not claim any lives. Prohibitory orders were enforced in 36 districts, and a complete ban on public meetings was imposed throughout the state. [9] Despite this, some elements of the police were accused of facilitating more violence.
On the afternoon of 19th a Hindu mob retaliated for the earlier property damage by Muslims, allegedly with PAC protection. Affected areas included Hapur Road, the Mawana bus stand, stadium, Shastri Nagar, and Miyan Mohammed Nagar where 225/354 houses of mostly poor Muslims were burnt. The residents, alleged that the PA opened fire at 2 p.m. and then started looting and burning. Many persons were burnt alive and 130 families were compensated at the rate of Rs 15,000/- each. On the night of the 19th, three people on a roof in Subash Nagar were killed in firing, allegedly from the direction of Hashimpura. [7]
50 gazetted police officers and more than 60 companies of the PAC, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Army had to control the riots. [13] In many cases, members of the local police and PAC were implicated unprovoked killings and supporting Hindu rioters, particularly in two infamous cases. On May 22, days after the initial violence, in the neighborhood of Hashimpura, PAC officials have been charged by court of filling buses with Muslims taken from their homes and killing 75 of them, dumping the corpses in two canals outside the city. [14] In the aftermath of the events, Meerut Bar Association President Anil Bakshi, claimed "Innocent people were framed by the state administration to save the policemen guilty of the massacre." [3]
Although most of the killing was done by the end of May, the violence continued to simmer for months afterwards, with individual killings, assaults and vandalism punctuated by more serious incidents. On July 15, a bomb blast at Bazaza Bazaar killed three, resulting in mobs assembling within two hourns and clashing with police at half a dozen points across the city. A week later, mirroring events in Punjab, a mob on the Meerut-Bijnor road on the night of July 22, mobs stopped four buses and lynched 11 Muslim passengers. According to Senior Superintendent of Police, G.L. Sharma, the massacre may have been caused by rumors of Muslims abducting devotees during the ongoing Shivaratri celebrations. [15]
On 6 September 2018, the Delhi High Court reserved its verdict in the case. On 31 October 2018, the Delhi High Court convicted 16 former PAC personnel for life after finding them guilty of the murder of 42 people. [16]
The Bombay riots were a series of riots that took place in Bombay, Maharashtra, between December 1992 and January 1993. An estimated 900 people, predominantly Muslims, were killed. The riots were mainly due to escalations of hostilities after large scale protests by Muslims in reaction to the 1992 Babri Masjid Demolition by Hindu Karsevaks in Ayodhya; and by Hindus in regards with the Ram Temple issue.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid was carried out on 6 December 1992 by a large group of activists of the Vishva Hindu Parishad and allied organisations. The 16th-century Babri Masjid in the city of Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh, India, had been the subject of a lengthy socio-political dispute, and was targeted after a political rally organised by Hindu nationalist organisations turned violent.
Western Uttar Pradesh is a region in India that comprises the western districts of Uttar Pradesh state, including the areas of Rohilkhand and those where Hindi and Braj are spoken. The region has some demographic, economic and cultural patterns that are distinct from other parts of Uttar Pradesh, and more closely resemble those of Haryana and Rajasthan states. The largest city of the region is Ghaziabad, while the second-largest city, Agra, is a major tourist destination.
The Hashimpura massacre was the killing of 75 Muslim men by police on or around 22 May 1987 near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh state, India, during the 1987 Meerut communal riots. It was reported that 19 personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary rounded up 42 Muslim youths from the Hashimpura mohalla (locality) of the city, took them to the outskirts of the city, shot them in cold blood and dumped their bodies in a nearby irrigation canal. A few days later, the dead bodies were found floating in the canal and a case of murder was registered. Eventually, 19 men were accused of having performed the act. In May 2000, 16 of the 19 accused surrendered and were later released on bail. Whereas, the other three accused died in the intervening period. In 2002, the Supreme Court of India ordered that the case trial should be transferred from the Ghaziabad district court to a Sessions Court at the Tis Hazari court complex in Delhi.
The Naroda Patiya massacre took place on 28 February 2002 at Naroda, in Ahmedabad, India, during the 2002 Gujarat riots. 97 Muslims were killed by a mob of approximately 5,000 people, organised by the Bajrang Dal, a wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, and allegedly supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party which was in power in the Gujarat State Government. The massacre at Naroda occurred during the bandh (strike) called by Vishwa Hindu Parishad a day after the Godhra train burning. The riot lasted over 10 hours, during which the mob plundered, stabbed, sexually assaulted, gang-raped and burnt people individually and in groups. After the conflict, a curfew was imposed in the state and Indian Army troops were called in to contain further violence.
The Bhagalpur violence of 1989 took place between Hindus and Muslims in the Bhagalpur district of Bihar, India. The violence started on 24 October 1989, and the violent incidents continued for 2 months, affecting the Bhagalpur city and 250 villages around it. Over 1,000 people were killed, and another 50,000 were displaced as a result of the violence. It was the worst instance of Hindu-Muslim violence in independent India at the time.
1992 Bangladesh pogroms was a series of violence against the Bengali Hindus and other non-Muslim minorities of Bangladesh, by Islamists in protest against the demolition of Babri Masjid and violence against Muslims in India driven out of hate and revenge mindset continuing from almost 1947. The incidents of violence began in December 1992 and continued till March 1993.
The Dhule riots were riots between the Hindu and Muslim community that took place in December 1992, October 2008 and January 2013 in Dhule in northern Maharashtra, India. These riots led to death of more than 18 people in the rioting as well as police firing. Hundreds of civilians and police were injured.
The 1980 Moradabad riots, also known as the Moradabad Muslim Massacre, refers to violence that happened in the Indian city of Moradabad during August–November 1980. When a pig entered the local Idgah during the Eid festival prayer on 13 August, local Muslims asked the police to remove the pig, but the police refused to do so. This led to a confrontation between the police and the Muslims. The police responded with indiscriminate firing, which led to over one hundred deaths. This was followed by a series of violent incidents which became religious in nature, and led to arson, looting and murders.
Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary (UP-PAC) or Pradeshik Armed Constabulary (PAC) is an armed police of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is maintained at key locations across the state and active only on orders from the Deputy Inspector General and higher-level authorities. It is usually assigned to VIP duty or to maintain law and order during fairs, festivals, athletic events, elections, and natural disasters. They are also deployed to quell outbreaks of student or labor unrest, organized crime, and communal riots; to maintain key guard posts; and to participate in antiterrorist operations. The Provincial Armed Constabulary is equipped with INSAS semi automatic guns and usually carries only lathis while controlling the mob during unrests. UP-PAC consists of a total of 20,000 personnel as of 2005, composed of 33 battalions located in different cities across the state as a wing of Uttar Pradesh Police. Each battalion is commanded by a Commanding Officer(CO) who is usually an IPS officer of Senior Superintendent rank, and has seven to eight companies consisting of 120 to 150 Jawans, each company headed by a State Police officer of Inspector rank, who is usually referred to as company commander in the PAC and below company there are 3 platoons consisting of 40-50 Jawans, each platoon is usually headed by a Sub-Inspector rank state police officer. The PAC is headed by the Additional Director General Provincial Armed Constabulary.
The clashes between the Hindu and Muslim communities in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, India and injured 93 and left more than 50,000 people displaced. By date 17 September, the curfew was lifted from all riot affected areas and the army was also withdrawn.
On 10 May 2014, a scuffle between two communities over construction of fence around well escalated into riots in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, a northern state of India As of 11 May, 3 people were killed and 50 injured, including a top police officer and two media persons.
There have been several instances of religious violence against Muslims since the partition of India in 1947, frequently in the form of violent attacks on Muslims by Hindu nationalist mobs that form a pattern of sporadic sectarian violence between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950 in 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982.
In October 1990, there was a major communal riot in Bijnor, a town in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. Stemming from a celebratory procession by local Hindu groups, it was the most destructive riot in the wake of concurrent Hindu nationalist campaigns, which eventually led to the demolition of Babri Masjid. The riots were also characterized by phases of passive and active complicity of the state machinery.
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