No challan yet in Hawal massacre case, no statement of eyewitnesses recorded: SHRC

Srinagar, Dec 16: Although a CRPF Court of Inquiry (COI) had identified 15 of its troopers who had massacred more than 50 unarmed mourners at Hawal here in 1990, no challan has been yet produced in the court, SHRC has said.
A 12-page report of the investigation wing of the State Human Rights Commission said the CRPF troopers of the 69 battalion stationed at the Islamia College “were responsible for killing innocent civilians without any reason and justification and were held guilty by the COI”.

“The inquiry committee also agreed upon the fact that the men on duty appeared to have forgotten the act of restraint and magnanimity,” reads the SHRC report.
The investigation wing of the SHRC had conducted an inquiry into the massacre in 2014.
The SHRC investigation came after a petition by rights activist Ahsan Untoo.

The inquiry report states: “So far the investigation of the case had been conducted by various investigation officers of the police and the Crime Branch but no genuine efforts had been taken to take the investigation of the case to its logical conclusion as till date no eyewitnesses had been examined and their statement recorded.”
Lakhan Singh (DSP), Mukhtar Singh (SI), Rajinder Singh (SI), Satpal Singh, TA Param, Muhammad Ghalib Khan, D Krishna, Desh Raj, Om Singh, Prem Singh, Y Krishna Rao, Y Shakula, DN Singh and AK Mita of CRPF had been held responsible for indiscriminately firing on the funeral procession of late Mirwaiz Molvi Muhammad Farooq.
In the interim report, the SHRC has charged N Sarvada, then additional superintendent of police who had conducted the investigation of the case and had submitted 20 case diaries, of being biased and callous in probing the case.
“The ASP hadn’t recorded the statements of the eye witnesses that is, the shopkeeper or any injured persons, who were near the scene of occurrence, and had only recorded the statements of CRPF officials who in their statement have stated that a large procession was coming from Soura towards Islamia College who were shouting anti-national slogans,” the report said.
The Investigating Officer had failed, the report states, to obtain even the list of the deceased and injured persons and hadn’t taken any serious steps to investigate the case “in an unbiased manner and has indulged in a flight of fancy and on his transfer handed over the case file to the police station Nowhatta without mentioning anywhere about the seized item which he had reportedly seized from the scene of the massacre.”
Also, the investigation report states that nothing is known about where the case file was between 13 August 1990 and 13 November 1992.
The investigation was later handed over to the Crime Branch.
“Though the investigation officer (Crime Branch) after obtaining the list of the injured had made efforts to record their statements, none of the witnesses turned up, as a result of which till date the statement of the injured persons had not been recorded, except for the statement of a few of the kin of the deceased,” the interim report reads.
In 1994 the case was closed by the Crime Branch on the directions of the then IG Crime.
“Till date no final report had been submitted to the concerned court,” the report reads.