Months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a special court on Wednesday acquitted all 32 accused including Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharati and Kalyan Singh.
The special court delivered its verdict in the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case in which BJP veterans L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were among the accused. The court said there was no conclusive proof against the accused.
CBI judge SK Yadav had on September 16 directed all the 32 surviving accused to remain present in the court on the day of the judgment.
The accused include former deputy prime minister Advani, former Union ministers Joshi and Uma Bharti, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, besides Vinay Katiyar and Sadhvi Rithambara.
Kalyan Singh, during whose tenure as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh the disputed structure was demolished, was put on trial in September last year after his tenure as Rajasthan Governor came to an end. Champat Rai, the general secretary of the trust in charge of constructing the Ram temple was also among those accused.
With the Supreme Court setting August 31 as the deadline and later extending it by a month for the CBI court to give its verdict, the trial court started day-to-day hearing to complete the task in time.
The central agency produced 351 witnesses and 600 documents as evidence before the court. Charges were framed against 48 people, but 17 have died during the course of the trial.
The trial under the serious criminal conspiracy charges commenced against them after having been dropped by the trial court in 2001. The verdict was upheld by the Allahabad High Court in 2010, but the apex court ordered the restoration of the conspiracy charge against them on April 19, 2017.
File photo of BJP leaders L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma BhartiFile photo of BJP leaders L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti
The top court had ordered daily hearing in the high profile case and directed the special judge to conclude it in two years.
Apart from conspiracy charges, the accused were also facing charges of having made assertions "prejudicial to national integration and injuring or defiling a place of worship" and indulging in "deliberate and malicious" acts intended to outrage religious feelings. However, they had pleaded innocence maintaining that there is no evidence to prove their guilt and claimed they were implicated by the then Congress government at the Centre as a political vendetta.
The Babri Masjid was demolished in December 1992 by "kar sevaks" who claimed that the mosque in Ayodhya was built on the site of an ancient Ram temple.
In a significant judgment last year, the Supreme Court allotted the disputed site in Ayodhya for construction of a Ram temple, while calling the demolition of the mosque a violation of the rule of law. An alternative five-acre site was marked in the city for building a mosque.
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