Given this attitude, the killers of the 42 Muslims in Hashimpura must be seen only as instruments of the “secular” state. That 19 PAC personnel, under platoon commander Surinder Pal Singh, rounded up Muslims in the Hashimpura neighbourhood of Meerut, should be blandly reported without mentioning religious identities. Religious identity must only be mentioned if terrorists turn out to be Muslims, which is what they are when police shoots them down. The number of youth taken away is still unclear, but the police rrative suggests 42, mostly weavers and daily wage earners, who were taken in a truck to the upper Ganga cal in Murad gar, near Ghaziabad.