A special court is set to pronounce its verdict in the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case on September 30, and has issued a notice to all the accused, including senior BJP leaders, to be present in the court for hearing. A special CBI Judge SK Yadav will pronounce the judgment in the case and the accused include LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti, and Kalyan Singh, among the 32 people accused in the case.
CBI counsel Lalit Singh told PTI that arguments of the defence and prosecution concluded on September 1 and thereafter, the special judge started writing the judgment. The CBI has produced 351 witnesses and about 600 documentary evidence before the court. The Babri mosque in Ayodhya was demolished by karsevaks on December 6, 1992.
The Supreme Court had in July 2019 directed that the trial in the case be completed in the next six months and the deadline by a month for the completion of the trial. The date earlier set for the judgment expired on August 31. Reports stated that a bench of Justices R F Nariman, Navin Sinha, and Indira Banerjee read the report submitted by Surendra Kumar Yadav and granted one month’s time to complete all the proceedings including the delivery of the judgment.
The SC in July 2019 had extended the deadline for completion of the trial in the Ayodhya case by six months and granted an extension of nine months for the judgment. The earlier deadline set by the Supreme Court for the special CBI court to pronounce the verdict was August-end. It was extended by a month on August 22.
The Supreme Court had last year allocated the disputed site at Ayodhya for a Ram temple, but had observed in the judgment that the demolition of the mosque was a violation of the rule of law. An alternative five-acre site has been found in the city for building a mosque.