Babri Masjid demolition verdict: All accused acquitted

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Sep 30, 2020: Judge SK Yadav has delivered the verdict that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was not pre-planned and there is not enough evidence against the accused. All the accused in the case have been acquitted. Almost 28 years after the Babri Masjid structure was razed by a mob in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya, leading to communal disharmony and riots, a special Central Bureau of Investigation court delivered its verdict in the historic case today.

Bharatiya Janata Party veterans Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh, all accused in the Babri mosque demolition case, joined through video conferencing on Wednesday at the time of delivery of verdict in the matter.

Reports, however, suggest that former deputy prime minister LK Advani will appear before the court through video-conferencing from Delhi.

Their advocate KK Mishra also said that Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas chief, Nritya Gopal Das, too is unlikely to be present in the CBI special court here.

Of the other accused Vinay Katiyar, Dharamdas, Vedanti, Lallu Singh, Champat Rai and Pawan Pandey have reached Lucknow ahead of the pronouncement of the verdict. The case relates to the razing of the disputed structure in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.

The Supreme Court had fixed September 30 as the deadline for the trial court to pronounce its judgement in the nearly three-decade old case.
Scroll back up to restore default view.

The 32 accused include former deputy prime minister Advani, former Union ministers Joshi and Uma Bharti, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, during whose tenure the structure was pulled down, besides Vinay Katiyar and Sadhvi Rithambhara.

Champat Rai, the general secretary of the trust in charge of constructing the Ram temple, is also among those accused.

With the Supreme Court setting August 31 as the deadline and later extending it by a month for the CBI court to give its verdict, the trial court started day-to-day hearing to complete the task in time.

The central agency produced 351 witnesses and 600 documents as evidence before the court. Charges were framed against 48 people, but 17 have died during the course of trial.

The trial under the serious criminal conspiracy charges commenced against them after having been dropped by the trial court in 2001. The verdict was upheld by the Allahabad High Court in 2010, but the apex court ordered restoration of the conspiracy charge against them on April 19, 2017.

The top court ordered daily hearing in the high profile case and directed the special judge to conclude it in two years.

The charge of conspiracy is in addition to the existing charges against them for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion for which they are already facing trial.

The accused are also facing charges of having made assertions ’prejudicial to national integration and injuring or defiling a place of worship’.

The other charges against them include indulging in ’deliberate and malicious’ acts intended to outrage religious feelings, uttering statements leading to public mischief, rioting and unlawful assembly.

The CBI argued that the accused conspired and instigated ’kar sevaks’ to demolish the 16th century mosque. But the accused pleaded innocence maintaining that there is no evidence to prove their guilt and claimed they were implicated by the then Congress government at the Centre as a political vendetta.

The Babri Masjid was demolished in December 1992 by ’kar sevaks’ who claimed that the mosque in Ayodhya was built on the site of an ancient Ram temple.
Photo: DOUGLAS E. CURRAN/AFP via Getty Images
Photo: DOUGLAS E. CURRAN/AFP via Getty Images

In a significant judgment last year, the Supreme Court allotted the disputed site in Ayodhya for construction of a Ram temple, while calling the demolition of the mosque a violation of the rule of law.

An alternative five-acre site was marked in the city for building a mosque.

Before the 2017 verdict of the apex court, two sets of cases were being heard in Lucknow and Raebareli.


courtesy: Yahoo