New Delhi: Special CBI Judge Surendra Kumar Yadav gave his verdict in the Babri Masjid demolition case on Wednesday, 28 years after a mob broke the 16th century structure in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. The court ruled that the CBI had not been able to produce evidence to support its allegation that there was a conspiracy to demolish the Babri Masjid. The judge has acquitted 32 accused in the case, including former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani, former Union Ministers MM Joshi and Uma Bharti and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh.
The court ruled that the CBI could not prove that there was any conspiracy to demolish the structure, believing that the demolition was not pre-planned, but was an act done by mischievous elements. The 32 accused were charged under various sections of the IPC including criminal conspiracy, rioting, promoting enmity between different groups and illegal assembly. During the investigation, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) produced 351 witnesses and 600 documents as evidence before the CBI court. The court initially framed charges against 49 accused, out of which 17 accused have died. The court has acquitted the remaining 32 accused.
Video is considered as tampered
Additional District and Sessions Judge SK Yadav pronounced the judgment saying, “The incident was not premeditated.” The court said that the incident of December 6, 1992 was spontaneous and no evidence of conspiracy was found in it. The video which the CBI had filed, was considered by the court as tampered. The court said that the video was not stored in a sealed envelope.
The court considered all the video recordings submitted by CBE as framed and refused to consider it as evidence. The court said that the CBI did not follow the Evidence Act. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad of the CBI had no direct hand. By 12 o’clock the situation was quite normal, but some chaotic elements created uproar and also threw stones.
It should be noted that there were a total of 49 accused in the Babri demolition case, but 17 accused died during the trial. On 6 December 1992, 2 FIRs were lodged in Faizabad after the Babri Masjid collapsed. FIR number 198 was against lakhs of Kar Sevaks while FIR number 198 was against Sangh Parivar activists including Advani, Joshi, the then Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray, Uma Bharti etc.
Today, among the 32 accused acquitted by the special CBI court in Lucknow, LK Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar, Sadhvi Ritambhara, Ram Vilas Vedanti, Dharam Das, Satish Pradhan, Champat Rai, Pawan Kumar Pandey, Braj Bhushan Singh, Jai Bhagwan Goyal, Maharaj Swami Sakshi, Ramchandra Khatri, Aman Nath Goyal, Santosh Dubey, Prakash Sharma, Jaibhan Singh Paveya, Vinay Kumar Rai, Lallu Singh, Omprakash Pandey, Kamlesh Tripathi alias Sati Dubey, Gandhi Yadav, Dharmendra Singh Gurjar, Ramji Gupta, Vijay Bahadur Singh, Naveen Bhai Shukla, Acharya Dharmendra Dev, Sudhir Kakkar and Ravindra Nath Srivastava
Also read in Hindi: बाबरी विध्वंस केस में आडवाणी, जोशी और उमा भारती समेत सभी 32 आरोपी बरी