The Supreme Court on Friday granted bail to two more convicts in the case pertaining to the killing of 42 Muslim men from Uttar Pradesh’s Hashimpura in 1987 [Sami Ullah vs Zulfikar Nasir]..A Bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih said the two convicts have till date undergone an incarceration of over six years and thus are entitled to bail.Earlier this month, the Court earlier had granted bail to 10 convicts, considering that they had been in jail since 2018 after the Delhi High Court reversed their acquittal in 2018..One of convicts granted bail today is 82 years old, the Court was told. In 2018, the High Court had convicted him and 15 others in the case related to killing of 42 Muslim men. .The incident happened on May 22, 1987, when Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) picked up the victims from Hashimpura in Meerut district, put them on a lorry, drove them to a nearby canal, shot them and then dumped their bodies in the canlIn March 2015, a trial court in Delhi acquitted the 16 PAC personnel on grounds of insufficient evidence.However, on October 31, 2018, a Delhi High Court bench comprising Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel set aside the trial court’s judgement and convicted the accused.Their appeals against the same are pending before the apex court.
