The Government of Maharashtra in two affidavits submitted to the Bombay High Court has given a clean chit to assistant police inspector Nikhil Kapse in connection with the 1993 police firing at Hari Masjid that resulted in the death of six persons. The Srikrishna Commission report on the 1992-93 Mumbai riots had held Kapse, then a police sub-inspector, “guilty of unjustified firing” and “inhuman and brutal behaviour”.
Responding to a petition filed by one of those injured in the firing, Farooq Mapkar (41), who had urged that Kapse be booked for murder, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection-I) Dattatraya Shinde – currently in-charge of the Special Task Force (STF) –has said in one affidavit that after scrutinising the entire material available to the STF, it has been concluded that no “criminal case can be registered against Kapse”. “It was found that Kapse and his staff carried out the firing at Hari Masjid while performing his duty,” Shinde said in the affidavit.
Another affidavit filed by Senior Police Inspector Namdeo Wayal states: “…for maintaining law and order and to save lives of people at large, the police personnel fired at the mob, which resulted in the death of six persons.”
In his affidavit, DCP Shinde said a departmental inquiry initiated against Kapse by the then Police Commissioner “came to the conclusion that the allegations levelled against Kapse are not proved and therefore, he came to be exonerated from the said departmental enquiry”.