No one demolished Babri Masjid

It comes very close to stating that no one demolished Babri Masjid, because the question that remains after the judgement of the CBI court in Lucknow on Wednesday is, who tore down the structure on December 6, 1992, when about 1.5 lakh people and a host of leaders, including the 32 leaders of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, who were present there, and the whole nation watched it being brought down brick by brick. The court concluded that the demolition was not pre-planned and there was no conspiracy on the part of the leaders to demolish the masjid, as the case against them is not supported by concrete evidence. BJP and Sangh Parivar leaders have always claimed that the demolition was a spontaneous act on the part of a restive crowd, and that they even tried to stop it. That narrative has won before the law, but the nation’s conscience won’t agree.

The real question is whether the nation has been able to deliver justice in the most traumatic event in its recent history. When the answer is in the negative, it may be held that the court did not appreciate the evidence presented before it, the investigating agency, in this case the CBI, did not do its job well, or that the prosecution did not effectively present the case before the court. There has been serious criticism of the CBI’s handling of the case. In criminal investigation, conspiracy is a difficult charge to prove. But in the case of a crime committed in front of the public, with any number of speeches, slogans and actions on the part of many leaders, including those who have been acquitted now, that show that there was a plan to bring down the mosque, the inability of the investigating agency to collect and present evidence is a momentous failure, deliberate or otherwise.

But the failure to deliver justice in the case is a national failure, not just a failure of the special court trying the case, the investigation and the prosecution. The Supreme Court, which awarded the land on which the masjid stood to a trust to build the Ram temple, had no doubt that the demolition was an illegal act. But the nation has been unable to find out who committed the crime and to bring them to justice even 28 years after it was committed. Justice delayed is justice denied, but justice which is both delayed and denied is more than injustice. A conviction would have shown that there was hope for justice to be sustained and the rule of law to prevail in the most adverse circumstances. But with such a crime going unpunished, the nation stands diminished.