New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked a sessions judge of a Lucknow court to submit a report with details of his intention about how he wants to complete the trial for the Babri Masjid demolition case which involves BJP veterans LK Advani, Uma Bharti and MM Joshi within the April 2019 deadline.
A bench consisting Justices RF Nariman and Indu Malhotra also asked the government of Uttar Pradesh to give response over a plea of trial court judge SK Yadav, whose promotion was stalled by the Allahabad High Court on the ground that the apex court had directed him to complete the trial.
The court sought the report from the judge in cover with sealing.
And on April 19, 2017, the Supreme Court had directed BJP’s top faces like LK Advani, MM Joshi and Uma Bharti that it would prosecute them for indulging serious offense of criminal conspiracy in the politically sensitive 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case and had ordered day-to-day trial to be concluded within two years and that falls on April 19, 2019.
The Apex court had called the act of demolition of the medieval era great monument a crime that had shaken the “secular fabric of the Constitution” and allowed the plea of CBI on the restoration of the criminal conspiracy charge against the VVIP accused.
“There shall be no de novo (fresh) trial. There shall be no transfer of the Judge conducting the trial until the entire trial concludes. The case shall not be adjourned on any ground except when the sessions court finds it impossible to carry on the trial for that particular date,” the top court had then said.
Both the separate trials in the trial courts of Rae Bareli and Lucknow was asked by the top court to be clubbed up and for that, it asked it be conducted in Lucknow.
The trial that was being held at a special court in Rae Bareli held that LK Advani, MM Joshi, and Uma Bharti cannot be charged for conspiracy against the 13 accused.
The second set of such a case was filed against unknown ‘karsevaks’ who were in and around the disputed structure of Babri Masjid and had put their efforts to pull it down. The trial against these was being held in Lucknow court.
The appeals were filed by CBI and Haji Mahboob Ahmad (Now Dead) against the dropping of conspiracy charges against 21 accused which included the top BJP leaders of whom eight are already dead.
Along with the BJP leaders LK Advani, MM Joshi, and Uma Bharti, conspiracy charges were also dropped against Kalyan Singh (currently the Governor of Rajasthan), VHP leader Acharya Giriraj Kishore and Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray.
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