[2][3] On 21 March 2015, all 16 men accused in the Hashimpura massacre case of 1987 were acquitted by Tis Hazari Court due to insufficient evidence.
[9] The following day, mobs burned down Gulmarg cinema hall, and as the death toll rose to 22, plus 75 injured, shoot-at-sight orders were issued on 20 May 1987.
They reportedly took about 40–45 of them, mostly day wage labourers and weavers, in a truck to the Upper Ganga canal in Murad Nagar, Ghaziabad district instead of taking them to the police station.
The three-member official investigation team headed by former auditor general Gian Prakash submitted its report in 1994,[14] though it wasn't made public till 1995, when victims moved the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court.
[16] After the inquiry, in 1996, a chargesheet was filed under Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) with the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Ghaziabad who subsequently issued warrants for the accused policemen to appear before the court.
[18] Later, when on 22 July, the trials began, and when one of four survivors, Zulfikar Nasser was deposed in front of additional sessions judge N. P. Kaushik at the Tis Hazari, three of the 19 original accused including platoon commander Surender Pal Singh, under whose instructions the massacre was allegedly committed, were already dead.
[17] Later on the second day, when the case property was sought by the judge, it was revealed that the rifles used had already been redistributed amongst the jawans of 41-B Vahini Battalion of the PAC (to which the accused belonged), after forensic analysis by CFSL Hyderabad.
[3] As per survivor witness Mohamad Usman, who was deposed in February 2007,.."after three boys were pulled out and shot point blank the others in the truck started screaming so the PAC jawans opened fire to quieten them".
On 19 May 2010, 4 witnesses in the case recorded their statements in front of Additional Sessions Judge, Manu Rai Sethi at a Delhi Court.
On 16 October 2012, Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy moved the Delhi court seeking a probe into the alleged role of P. Chidambaram, the Union Minister of State (MoS) for Home Affairs at the time, in the massacre.
[21] Tis Hazari Court, Delhi, on 21 March 2015 acquitted all 16 of the accused in the Hashimpura massacre case of 1987, due to insufficient evidence.
[10] The inquiry revealed that in September all the accused remained in service, and none had any mention of the incident in their Annual Confidential Report (ACR)s.[25] Five men who were shot and survived, later became witnesses for the prosecution case in 2007.