Why shouldn’t you face Babri charges again, SC asks Advani, Uma & Co
The Supreme Court issued notices Tuesday to senior BJP
leaders, including L K Advani, Uma Bharti, Kalyan Singh and Murli Manohar
Joshi, and several others, asking why conspiracy charges against them should
not be restored in the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case.
A bench led by Chief Justice H L Dattu asked the leaders to
submit their responses within four weeks on why they should not be asked to
stand trial for their alleged complicity in the demolition. They have also been
given liberty to raise objections on the delay in seeking restoration of
charges against them. Conspiracy charges were dropped by a trial court in 2001 and
the order was upheld by the Allahabad High Court in 2010. The CBI appealed
against the High Court order but only after nine months. Advani and others
sought dismissal of the CBI petition, citing delay as reason.
The notices were issued by the Supreme Court on a fresh
petition filed by Haji Mehboob, one of the original petitioners in the title
suit representing the Muslim community in the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi land
dispute case. During a brief hearing Tuesday, Additional Solicitor General
Neeraj K Kaul told the bench that the CBI would require some more time to ready
documents to show why the delay occurred. He asked for four more weeks. The
bench granted the CBI additional time to file a detailed response.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal and advocate M R Shamshad
appeared for Mehboob and requested the bench to let him intervene and argue as
a party in the case independently. The bench admitted the petition and fixed
the matter for a hearing after four weeks.
As reported by The Indian Express, the court had agreed a
day earlier to hear Mehboob’s petition which claimed that with the BJP in
power, the CBI may not make adequate efforts to get conspiracy charges restored
against the party leaders.
Mehboob, 77, said his fears stemmed from the fact that
Rajnath Singh, an accused in the case, was now Home Minister and his ministry
had administrative control over CBI. Another accused, Kalyan Singh, was now
Governor of Rajasthan, he said. Stating that his house was among the many burnt in the
violence that followed the demolition, Mehboob said his petition ought to be
heard on merits to ensure the matter was not botched up. “There are reliable reports. CBI may not seriously press the
said petition in its true intent and spirit,” the petitioner said, adding “it
is necessary that a public-spirited person takes up the issue to test the
impugned judgment of Allahabad High Court in the judicial scrutiny before this
court”.
Two FIRs were lodged in the wake of the demolition of the
Babri Masjid. One against the kar sevaks who allegedly demolished the mosque
while the second named Advani, Joshi, Bharti, Vinay Katiyar, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj
Kishore, Vishnu Hari Dalmiya, Sadhvi Rithambara and others for “making
provocative speeches” to instigate the kar sevaks. Shiv Sena leader Bal
Thackeray’s name was removed after his death. The CBI had claimed it was not possible to separate the
accused in one FIR from those in the other, since the offences transposed from
the first case to the second. It said all those named in the first FIR should
be tried for conspiracy as well. But in 2001, a lower court dropped the
conspiracy charge against the leaders on the ground that the case related only
to the volunteers who razed the mosque. This order was upheld by the High
Court.
