Ayodhya case: Sunni board clarifies stand on birthplace

NEW DELHI: The Sunni Central Wakf Board clarified on Wednesday its Tuesday statement before the Supreme Court accepting Ram Chabutra (a platform within the disputed area) as the birth place of Lord Ram, saying the board’s decision not to challenge the Faizabad court’s 1886 finding holding the spot as the birthplace should not be construed as an acceptance of the same.

The board’s counsel, senior advocate Zafaryab Jilani made the submission before a fivejudge bench hearing the Ayodhya land dispute case.

Led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, the bench is hearing crossappeals filed against Allahabad high court’s 2010 verdict in the dispute. Jilani also read out various gazetteers and from travelogues to claim there was nothing to show that Hindus had any “attached aastha” to the central dome of the Masjid till 1850 or that the mosque was built over the remains of a temple.

Justice DY Chandrachud, one of the judges on the bench, referred to a gazetteer to say Hindus and Muslims offered prayers at the disputed site before the communal riots broke out in 1855.

“But the subsequent documentary evidence has belied this stand,” Jilani said. Justice Ashok Bhushan, another judge, recounted statements of witnesses who said what they called Babri Masjid was the Janmabhumi for Hindus and wondered if this amounted to admission.

Justice SA Bobde asked whether Hindus had tried to worship at the site after 1528 and Muslims not allowed it. Senior Advoate Meenakshi Arora, also an advocate for Muslim parties, questioned the Archaeological Survey of India’s report prepared after the site was excavated on the orders of Allahabad high court.

The report, she argued, did not offer any verifiable conclusion and was just an opinion. Disagreeing with Arora’s contention, the bench said the forum to question the ASI report was the high court and not the Supreme Court which is hearing the first appeal. Justice Chandrachud said the author of the report should have been summoned during the trial. “Without doing that, how can you say it suffers from inconsistencies.”

TOP COURT IS HEARING CROSS-APPEALS FILED AGAINST ALLAHABAD HC’S 2010 VERDICT