SC ORDERS TIME-BOUND TRIAL OF ADVANI, JOSHI IN BABRI MASJID CASE
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders L K Advani (pictured), Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti will be prosecuted for criminal conspiracy in the politically sensitive Babri Masjid demolition case, with the Supreme Court on Wednesday ordering day-to-day trial to be concluded in two years. The apex court, which dubbed the demolition of the medieval era monument as a “crime” that shook the “secular fabric of the Constitution”, allowed the Central Bureau of Investigation’s plea on restoration of the criminal conspiracy charge against the VVIP accused. The court, however, said there will be no fresh trial, no transfer of the judge conducting the trial until the entire trial concludes, and that the sessions court will complete the trial and deliver its judgment within two years.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti will be prosecuted on a charge of criminal conspiracy in the Babri Masjid demolition case, with the Supreme Court on Wednesday ordering a day-today trial to be concluded in two years.
The apex court, which dubbed the demolition in late 1992 of the medieval era monument as a “crime” that shook the “secular fabric of the Constitution”, allowed the Central Bureau of Investigation’s plea on restoration of the criminal conspiracy charge against the VIP accused.
The court, however, said there will be no new trial, no transfer of the judge conducting the trial until the entire trial concludes, and that the sessions court will complete the trial and deliver its judgment within two years. The ruling was also seen as a jolt to presidential ambitions of Advani, 89, and Joshi, 83. Others who will be tried in the 1992 demolition case include Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh, BJP MP Vinay Katiyar, Sadhvi Ritambara and Vishnu Hari Dalmia. The court noted that Singh, during whose tenure as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh the disputed structure was razed, is entitled to immunity under Constitution as long as he remains in gubernatorial position. However, the sessions court will frame charges and move against him as soon as he ceases to be governor, it said.
The court came down heavily on the CBI for the delay of 25 years in the trial and said, “The accused persons have not been brought to book largely because of the conduct of the CBI in not pursuing the prosecution of the aforesaid alleged offenders in a joint trial, and because of technical defects which were easily curable but which were not cured by the state government.”
Issuing a slew of directions, a bench comprising Judges P C Ghose and R F Nariman said,