DEHRADUN: Nearly 32 years after the Rampur Tiraha firing, one of the darkest chapters of the Uttarakhand statehood movement, a special CBI court has convicted three former Uttar Pradesh police personnel in a fake arms recovery case.
The case was allegedly fabricated to justify police action against protesters.
The court sentenced the then Chhapar police station SHO Brijkishore and constables Umesh Chand and Anil Kumar to one-and-a-half years of rigorous imprisonment each.
The three have also been fined Rs 21,000 each.
The verdict was delivered by Special CBI Court presiding officer D K Faujdar after a prolonged trial involving witness testimonies, documentary evidence and CBI findings.
Advocate Anurag Verma, while sharing details of the judgment, described it as “an important milestone in the long struggle for justice”.
The case dates back to October 1994, when thousands of activists from the hill regions of the then-undivided Uttar Pradesh were marching towards Delhi to press for a separate Uttarakhand state.
At Rampur Tiraha in Muzaffarnagar, police opened fire on the protesters. Six people were killed and several others injured in the firing. The incident triggered outrage across the hills and became a defining moment in the statehood movement.
After the firing, police registered cases claiming that the protesters were carrying country-made pistols, cartridges and sharp-edged weapons. It was alleged that the agitators had fired at the police, forcing the personnel to retaliate.
However, when the probe was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the agency found serious discrepancies in the police version.
According to the CBI, the arms recovery was fabricated.
The investigation found that seizure memos had been prepared later, and signatures of several witnesses were allegedly taken on blank papers.
These documents were then used to portray the statehood activists as criminals.
The CBI filed a chargesheet against the three police personnel for preparing false documents, cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy.
After a trial stretching over three decades, the court held that false evidence had been created to mislead the justice system and malign innocent protesters.
Families of the statehood activists and supporters of the Uttarakhand movement termed the verdict a significant, though delayed, victory.
They said the ruling reaffirmed that no one, not even those in uniform, could escape accountability.
Pappu Sharma, son of Mahavir Sharma, an eyewitness to the firing and a CBI witness, said, “This judgment is a major victory for the statehood activists.”
However, several activists said the punishment was inadequate, and that responsibility must be fixed on senior officers as well.
Statehood activist and senior BJP leader Ravindra Jugran told TNIE, “Justice delayed is justice denied. After 32 years, this is only the beginning, and that too with punishment for lower-level officials. The senior-most officers whose role was suspicious at that time are still outside the legal net.”
Jugran said he had filed a PIL in the Allahabad High Court in 2018 over the case.
“The Chief Justice took cognisance of my petition and summoned the records of the Muzaffarnagar court,” he said.
“This atrocity was not against one person or one community. It was an attack on the entire state of Uttarakhand, on Devbhoomi. The National Commission for Women and the National Human Rights Commission had also supported our stand. We still have faith in the judiciary. The real culprits will also be brought to justice,” Jugran added.