Brave Deputy Superintendent of police 32-year-old Zia-ul Haq was mercilessly tortured and killed in cold blood by the goons of Food and civil supplies minister Raja Bhaiya after eight policemen including the inspector of Kunda fled from the scene, leaving Zia to face an armed and dangerous mob alone.

Zia’s wife Parveen whom he married just one year back has lodged an FIR against Raja Bhaiya, but the UP government has made it categorically clear that it won’t arrest Raja Bhaiya as there is no direct evidence against him.

I doubt if the Akhilesh government would have exercised the same restraint if the accused was someone else.

Watching the slain policeman’s devastated wife on TV and the government’s shocking response, my mind goes back to a sweltering morning in Raja Bhaiya’s bastion, Kunda. It was July 7, 1995 and I was reporting for an Allahabad-based daily newspaper.

There were no cellphones then, so when words of a massacre of Muslims trickled from Dilerganj Village in Kunda (district Pratapgarh), I rushed there along with my photographer Narendra Yadav.
The sight that greeted us was blood-curdling. The dead and injured lay in heaps. All houses belonging to Muslims had been razed to the ground and burnt by Raja Bhaiya private army, RJYB, an acronym for Raja Bhaiya Youth Brigade. The police had not arrived as yet so I managed to speak to some survivors. They told me how a mob of 400 led by RJYB goons attacked the village with swords, hatchets, sticks when the men had gone to the fields. Among the dead were four young girls Ruksana, 18, Parveen 13, Seema 11 and Nasreen 8. All of them were shot and their bodies were thrown into the river.

Yet, when we ran the story the following day, the then IG Police Hakam Singh, denied the women were shot.

When I met him, he said the women died due to drowning after they jumped into the river to escape the marauding mob.

He made it appear as it was the women’s fault that they jumped into the river. To substantiate his bogus claim he showed us their autopsy report which attributed the deaths to drowning.

But we stuck to our story. Two days later, we carried out a sting operation and exposed the Chief Pharmacist of the Hospital who prepared the false autopsy reports.

We also found a General Diary entry at the nearby Kokhraj Police Station which clearly stated that the bodies had gunshot wounds. Carried by the strong current of the river, the bodies had drifted away into the jurisdiction of Kokhraj Police Station. When they were recovered, the policemen there did a panchnama and made an entry in their General Diary — something that IG Singh had forgotten to consider.

Our startling revelations sparked a storm. Several commissions were appointed and a high-level probe was ordered. I don’t know what came out of them but I do remember getting some threatening letters and late night phone calls afterwards.

Mazhar Farooq