The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned CBI for the
delay in filing appeal against the Allahabad High Court order that
conspiracy charge will not apply to BJP leader L.K. Advani and others in
the Babri Masjid demolition case.
A bench headed by
Justice H.L. Dattu directed that an affidavit be filed within two weeks
by a senior law officer of the Central government after noting that the
delay of 167 days was caused because of a law officer.
In
compliance with the apex court’s earlier order, CBI on Tuesday placed
before the bench the case details in which it submitted that the delay
was caused as the drafting of the appeal against the Allahabad High
Court verdict was pending before Additional Solicitor General and
Solicitor General for their approval and opinion.
“The
delay was on the part of Solicitor General. So affidavit from the
concerned person would facilitate us to understand the delay,” the bench
said.
“In your interest it is better if an affidavit
is filed,” the court said, granting two weeks time to CBI to get the
affidavit filed by the senior law officer.
The bench,
however, in its order did not mention the officer who would be filing
the affidavit and said it should be filed by a senior law officer.
The
apex court was hearing CBI’s appeal challenging the verdicts of a
special CBI court and the Allahabad High Court dropping conspiracy
charge against Advani, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar and Murli
Manohar Joshi.
The others against whom the charge
was dropped included Satish Pradhan, C.R. Bansal, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj
Kishore, Sadhvi Ritambhara, V.H. Dalmia, Mahant Avaidhynath, R.V.
Vedanti, Param Hans Ram Chandra Das, Jagdish Muni Maharaj, B.L. Sharma,
Nritya Gopal Das, Dharam Das, Satish Nagar and Moreshwar Save.
CBI
has challenged in the Supreme Court the May 21, 2010 order of the high
court, which had upheld a special court’s decision to drop the charge
against the leaders.
The High Court had at that time,
however, allowed CBI to proceed with other charges against Mr. Advani
and others in a Rae Bareily court, under which the case falls.
The
May 2010 order of the High Court had said there was no merit in CBI’s
revision petition against the May 4, 2001 order of the special court
which had directed dropping of criminal conspiracy charge against them.
There
are two sets of cases — one against Mr. Advani and others who were on
the dais at Ram Katha Kunj in Ayodhya in December 1992 when the Babri
Masjid was demolished, while the other case was against lakhs of unknown
‘karsevaks’ who were in and around the disputed structure.
CBI
had chargesheeted Mr. Advani and 20 others under sections 153A
(promoting enmity between classes), 153B (imputations, assertions
prejudicial to national integration) and 505 (false statements, rumours
etc circulated with the intent to cause mutiny or disturb public
peace)of IPC.
It had subsequently invoked charges
under section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC which was quashed by the
special court whose decision was upheld by the high court. Bal
Thackeray’s name was removed from the list of accused persons after his
death.
While upholding the special court’s order, the
high court had said CBI at no point of time, either during the trial at
Rae Bareily or in its revision petition, ever stated that there was
offence of criminal conspiracy against the leaders.
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