The Supreme Court on Friday issued notices to top BJP and Sangh Parivar leaders, including L.K. Advani and M.M. Joshi, on a CBI plea seeking to club the Babri Masjid demolition case against them with that of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and former UP chief minister Kalyan Singh and eleven others.
The CBI sought to club the case of Thackeray group with that of Advani and seven BJP and Sangh leaders in a bid to extend the charge of criminal conspiracy under Section 120-B of IPC — existing in the case of Thackeray group — to the case against Advani and other BJP and Sangh leaders.
The CBI moved the apex court after its petition for clubbing of the cases against the two sets of accused to make it one “consolidated” case against 21 persons with the criminal conspiracy charge, was rejected by Allahabad high court on May 20, 2010.
While the names of Mr Advani, Mr Joshi, Vinay Katiyar, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore, V.H. Dalmiya, Uma Bharat and Sadhvi Ritambhra figured in FIR No-198, Bal Thackeray, Kalyan Singh and 11 others faced separate FIR No-197, which had a total of 47 accused.
Additional solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam, grilled by a bench of Justices V.S. Sirpurkar and T.S. Thakur for nearly 45 minutes on CBI’s latest move when the trial in both the cases was under progress, said that the agency has dropped the names of 13 accused form FIR No-197 and wanted to club them with 8 BJP and Sangh leaders to have a “de-novo (fresh trial) with inclusion of criminal conspiracy charge.”
As the bench questioned the CBI’s motive when the issue had been earlier adjudicated up to the SC earlier on the issue “segregation” of the case of Mr L.K. Advani and the 7 other leaders upheld by the apex court, the SG cited the initial “consolidated chargesheet” of 2001 as a ground for clubbing of the cases against the two sets of accused persons.
He said the “consolidated chargesheet” filed before segregation of the case of 8 BJP and Sangh leaders, actually contained the criminal conspiracy charge and their case was separated only due to a “technical flaw” as the FIR No-198 did not figure in UP government notification for setting up of a special court in Lucknow for Babri Masjid demolition trial.
Since the special judge did not have the jurisdiction to hold trial against the 8 BJP and Sangh leaders in the absence of a formal notification by the UP government, the case was transferred to Rae Barelli and the CBI filed an additional chargesheet without the conspiracy charge as it did not exist in the FIR No-198.
However, the role of all these 21 accused persons was “identical” as they were not active participants in the Babri Masjid demolition but allegedly had a wider role of mobilising people at Ayodhya on December 2, 1992, which makes a case for slapping of the charge of criminal conspiracy against them, the SG said.
The FIR No-198 against Mr Advani and 7 BJP and Sangh leaders contained the charges only under sections 152A, 153B, 505, 147 and 149 of IPC, which respectively deal with the offences of promoting enmity among people of different religion, casting imputation on national integration, making statements aimed at creating mischief, rioting and the unlawful assembly.