The Supreme Court had said that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was clearly illegal, Randeep Surjewala said.
New Delhi:
Congress has criticized the Lucknow Special Court’s decision to acquit all defendants in the demolition case of the 28-year-old Babri Masjid, saying it held no one responsible even when the Supreme Court called the demolition illegal. The ruling, the party said, “contradicts” the Supreme Court ruling of last November and the spirit of the Constitution and called on the Center and the Uttar Pradesh government to appeal to a higher court.
The Lucknow court had said that the demolition of the temple was not planned in advance and that there was “insufficient evidence against the defendants,” whose ranks included the founding members of the BJP LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi and top leaders Uma Bharti and Kalyan. Singh.
The court had denied the video released by the Central Bureau of Investigation, saying that its authenticity cannot be proven and that the audio was bad. The court had also said that “antisocial elements had tried to demolish the structure and the accused leaders had tried to stop them.”
Congress noted that in its November ruling allowing the construction of a temple at the Ram Janambhoomi site in Ayodhya, the Supreme Court had said that the demolition of Babri Masjid was a clear illegality and a “flagrant violation of the rule of law” .
“But the Special Court exonerated all defendants. It is clear that the decision of the Special Court goes against the decision of the Supreme Court of India,” read a statement from the leader of Congress and spokesman for the party, Randeep Surjewala.
The party also accused the BJP and its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of having a “deep-rooted conspiracy” to destroy the country’s “friendship and communal brotherhood” by “usurping power at any cost.”
“The then Uttar Pradesh government of the BJP was an accomplice in the designed attack on the constitutional spirit of India. So much so that the Supreme Court was misled into filing an incorrect affidavit,” Congress said.
Kalyan Singh, who was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh at the time of the December 1992 demolition, was charged with conspiracy in the case. As 3,000 people died in riots across the country following the demolition of the mosque, the Singh government was removed from office. He was acquitted along with the others today.
The demolition of the 15th-century mosque, the five-judge court headed by then-Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi had said was “a calculated act of destruction of a public place of worship.”
The high court had also said that it was necessary to “provide restitution to the Muslim community for the illegal destruction of their place of worship,” and asked the Center to allocate equal land in Ayodhya to Muslims for the construction of a mosque.
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