Allahabad HC reserves order on maintainability of petition challenging acquittals in Babri demolition case

The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has reserved its order on the maintainability of the petition seeking to challenge the special CBI court's verdict acquitting all the 32 accused persons, including senior BJP leaders L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and others, in the Babri Masjid demolition cases.

A bench comprising justices Ramesh Sinha and Saroj Yadav reserved its ruling on the plea after hearing the counsels of the CBI, who opposed the petition, and the petitioners on Monday.

Two residents of Ayodhya Haji Mehboob and Haji Akhlaq, who were witnesses in the case, have filed a criminal revision petition before the high court contending that that they had moved the high court as the CBI had not challenged the special court's decision.

The CBI counsel contended that the petitioners did not have locus standi in the matter.

A special CBI court had earlier acquitted all 32 accused in the matter citing lack of evidence against them. The CBI court had said in its verdict that the demolition of the disputed structure was not ‘pre-planned’ and that it was the handiwork of some ‘’anti-social elements’’, who were among the thousands of ‘karsevaks’.

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The court had also said that the incident had happened ‘spontaneously’ and, giving a clean chit to the accused persons, added that they had in fact tried to stop the ‘karsevaks’ from demolishing the structure.

The court had , however, said that the CBI had not sealed the cassettes containing speeches of the accused persons and the negatives of the photographs of the accused persons were not furnished.

Besides Advani, Joshi, Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh, those acquitted, included Vinay Katyar, Sadhvi Ritambhara, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Ram Vilas Vedanti, Mahant Dharam Das, Satish Pradhan, Pawan Kumar Pandey, Lallu Singh, Prakash Verma, Vijay Bahadur Singh, Santosh Dubey, Gandhi Yadav, Ramji Gupta, Braj Bhushan Saran Singh, Kamalesh Tripathi, Ramchandra Khatri, Jai Bhagwan Goyal, Om Prakash Pandey, Jaibhan Singh, Sakshi Maharaj, Vinay Kumar Rai, Naveen Shukla, R.N.Srivastava, Acharya Dharmendra Dev, Sudhir Kakkad and Dharmednra Gujjar.

The accused persons, who died during the pendency of the trial, included, Kalyan Singh, former VHP international president Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore, Vishnu Hari Dalmiya, Mahant Avaidyanath and Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray's father Bala Saheb Thackeray.

The cases pertained to the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 by thousands of 'karsevaks'.