Babri demolition: Allahabad HC to hear petition over acquittal of accused

The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court is set to hear on Monday a revision petition filed against the acquittals of all the 32 accused, including former deputy prime minister L K Advani and senior BJP leader Uma Bharti, in the Babri mosque demolition case.

The matter was earlier fixed for July 11, but the lawyers for the revisionists sought an adjournment. The bench agreed and listed it for Monday with a caution that it would not adjourn the hearing again.

The bench headed by Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh will hear the petition by two Ayodhya residents - Haji Mahmood Ahmad and Syed Akhlaq Ahmad.

The two men have alleged that they were witnesses in the trial against the accused and that they were also the victims of the violence.

The Babri mosque was demolished by karsevaks on December 6, 1992. After a long legal battle, the special CBI court on September 30, 2020, pronounced the judgment in the criminal trial and acquitted all the accused, also including the then Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh and senior BJP leaders MM Joshi, Vinay Katiyar, Sadhvi Ritambhara and Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.

The trial judge had refused to believe newspaper cuttings and video clips as evidence as the originals of the same were not produced, while the entire edifice of the case rested on these pieces of documentary evidence.

The trial judge also held that the CBI could not produce any evidence that the accused had a meeting with karsevaks in this connection.

Assailing the findings of the trial court, the revisionists pleaded that the trial court committed an error by not convicting the accused having ample evidence on record.

"The trial judge did not appreciate the evidence of conspiracy in the right perspective," they alleged in the petition.