On Monday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed its objections in a matter pertaining to the acquittal of 32 people in the case surrounding the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya.

Readers would recall that on September 30, 2020, a special CBI court had acquitted the 32 people including LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharati, Vinay Katyar, Sadhvi Ritambhara, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Ram Vilas Vedanti, Mahant Dharam Das, Satish Pradhan, Pawan Kumar Pandey, Lallu Singh, Prakash Verma, Vijay Bahadur Singh, Santosh Dubey, Gandhi Yadav, Ramji Gupta, Braj Bhushan Saran Singh, Kamalesh Tripathi, Ramchandra Khatri, Jai Bhagwan Goyal, Om Prakash Pandey, Jaibhan Singh, Sakshi Maharaj, Vinay Kumar Rai, Naveen Shukla, R N Srivastava, Acharya Dharmendra Dev, Sudhir Kakkar and Dharmendra Gujjar.

Special CBI judge SK Yadav delivered the judgment that ran into over 2,000 pages and held that there was no criminal conspiracy behind the demolition. The court further held that the demolition wasn’t planned and that the accused persons were trying to stop the mob, and not inciting violence.The court further said that it could not probe the authenticity of the audio and video evidence provided by the CBI. It said that those who climbed the dome were anti-social elements.

A total of 48 people had been accused in the case, but 16 died during the trial period itself. These include – Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, former Gorakhnath Mutt head Mahant Advaitnath, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leaders Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore and Vishnu Hari Dalmia.

The communally charges speeches that allegedly led to the demolition, and the demolition itself were widely covered in the news media. The demolitions also precipitated further communal conflagration.

On January 8, 2021, two men from Ayodhya – Haji Mehboob and Syed Akhlaq who claim that they had witnesses the demolition and that their homes, that were located next to the mosque, had been attacked and torched by the kar sevaks, moved a petition challenging the acquittals. SabrangIndia had reported previously, the petitioner’s application referred to common intention of the accused to demolish Babri Masjid and stated that “the essence of liability to be found in the existence of common intention is that the criminal act complained against was done by one of the accused persons in furtherance of common intention of all, if this is shown, then the liability for the crime may be imposed on any one of the persons in the same manner as if the act was done by him alone.”

The petitioners contended that the CBI court failed to appreciate the basic law of offence dealing with group liability or vicarious liability of members in offences related to Public Tranquillity. Their application further stated that the CBI court “failed to appreciate the basic facts that these attacks are not against any individual, they are meant to act as threat to an entire religious community charged by communal hatred,” They further stated, “The idea is to intimidate and cause fear in the minds of minority, with an aim to instigate the community to react and thereby create a spiral or violence in which the control is with the hate-mongering groups of the majority community.”

But on Monday, the CBI raised an objection as to the maintainability of the appeal on the ground that the two men were not victims.

A Bench of Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Renu Agrawal will hear the matter next on September 26.

Related:

Babri Masjid demolition case: Allahabad High Court to hear plea against acquittal of 32 people

No one conspired to demolish Babri Masjid?

CBI court's Babri Masjid demolition judgment challenged