The High Court of Uttarakhand, hearing on a petition related to the infamous Muzaffarnagar shooting incident of 1996, has ordered the Dehradun district judge to submit a report in two weeks. The high court single bench of justice lokpal Singh has also issued notices to the government and Central Bureau of Investigation.
According to the case details, advocate and statehood activist Raman Kumar Sah filed a petition in the high court. In the petition he stated that after quashing of the public interest litigation regarding 10 per cent reservation for statehood activists in government jobs, he was collecting information regarding the statehood activists in order to challenge the decision in the Supreme Court. He had sought documented information regarding the Muzaffarnagar shooting incident from the office of the special judicial magistrate, Dehradun but he was told that the sought documentation is not available there. He then filed a petition regarding this in the high court of Uttarakhand. He has sought in the petition that a CBI probe be ordered, the sought documentation be provided to him and that a case be registered against those responsible for the purported disappearance of the said file.
Sah states that during the Uttarakhand statehood movement on October 1-2, 1994, the statehood activists demonstrating in support of the demand had been fired upon by the police in Muzaffarnagar where murder, rape and loot were also committed. He states that in its report, the CBI had stated that in the said incident 28 people had died, seven cases of rapes were committed while 17 women had been molested. The atrocities were purportedly carried out on the directions of the then district magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, Anant Kumar. On April 22, 1996 the CBI found Kumar guilty under sections 302, 307 and other sections of the Indian Penal Code. However, he later challenged this in the high court where the order of the lower court was quashed and the petition was disposed of by the division bench in 2003. The State government and statehood activists had then filed a review petition in the high court where the earlier decision was recalled and the matter was sent for hearing to another bench. During May 2004, the division bench had rejected Anant Kumar’s petition. Since then, this case has been pending in the lower court. On February 17, 2018, when the petitioner (Sah) submitted an application in the lower court to secure a copy of the order of April 22, 1996, he was informed by the office that there was no record of the case available.
After hearing the petition on Tuesday, the high court single bench ordered the Dehradun district judge to submit a report in two weeks while notices were also issued to the Government and CBI. The case is now listed for hearing in two weeks time.