Hashimpura

Book excerpt: Searching for survivors among the blood-soaked bodies strewn around the canal and between the ravines near Makanpur village, on the Delhi–Ghaziabad border, on the night of 22 May 1987, with just a dim torchlight—the memories are still fresh in Vibhuti Narain Rai’s mind. On that fateful night, when Rai first heard about the killing, he could not believe the news was true until he, along with the district magistrate and a few other officials, went to Hindon canal. He quickly realized that all of them had become witnesses to secular India’s most shameful and horrendous incident—personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) had rounded up dozens of Muslims from riot-torn Meerut and had killed them in cold blood in Rai’s area of jurisdiction. Offering a blow-by-blow account of the massacre and its aftermath, Hashimpura is a screaming narrative of the barbaric use of state force and the spineless politics in post-Independent India.