May 25  , 1998

Justice gets bogged down in a tortuous legal process as the 49 accused fail to respond to the summons of the special court hearing the case.

By Farzand Ahmed

It won't take an astrologer to tell Judge Jagdish Prasad Srivastava, who presides over the Lucknow-based Additional Special Sessions Court (Ayodhya case), what he'll do at work on May 22. The answer is simple: precisely nothing. For over eight months, the good judge has been waiting for the 49 accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case to appear before him. He first summoned them on October 10, 1997. Thirty-four showed up. Wanting all the accused to appear together, Srivastava set a fresh date: November 21. Only five turned up. There have been three dates since then -- May 22 will be the fourth -- and not one person has shown up.

The truant 49 include senior leaders of the BJP and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Three Union ministers figure in the list: Home Minister L.K. Advani, Human Resources Development (HRD) Minister Murli Manohar Joshi and Minister of State for hrd Uma Bharati. They were all summoned when, following a CBI charge-sheet -- and an appearance by the accused before the CBI magistrate's court -- Srivastava found prima facie evidence to frame criminal charges. "Aropit kiye jaate hain (They stand charged)" were the words he had used.

The criminal charges were framed on various counts. Among others, these were dacoity (IPC Section 147), defiling a place of worship (Section 295) and promoting enmity on the basis of religion (Section 153A).

The reason the 49 have managed to stay away from the Ayodhya case court is that 33 of them have moved a revision petition before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court challenging Srivastava's summons. The petitioners' contention is that while the CBI examined some 950 witnesses and gathered over 400 documents, none made it clear as to who was responsible for the demolition.

The petitioners argue that though leaders like Advani and Kalyan Singh, Uttar Pradesh chief minister then and now, had promised the construction of a temple, they had not promised the destruction of the mosque. None of the BJP bigwigs are among the 33 petitioners. It's a proxy battle by the small fry.

The CBI has countered these claims by saying that such issues can only be raised after charges have been formally framed and the trial has begun. After four months of hearings, the high court reserved its ruling on March 18. Once the ruling is pronounced, the matter will be back in Srivastava's court. Or will it? Even if the petitioners lose in the high court, there's always the Supreme Court to appeal to.

If you think progress in the criminal case is somewhat slow, consider the one-man Justice M.S. Liberhan Commission, inquiring into the role of Kalyan, other senior politicians and bureaucrats during the demolition and its aftermath. It summoned 17 top Sangh Parivar leaders only to be confronted by a high court stay order. Over four years, various Union governments have not been able to get the stay order vacated.

The commission has also been engaged in a bit of a cross-country shuttle. It was first based in Lucknow and then moved to Delhi. Liberhan himself was at the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Chandigarh before moving to the Chennai High Court. The commission's documentation certainly must include elaborate travel bills.

It would seem comic were it not for the demolition being such a tragedy. Sadly, Ayodhya seems set to be with us well into the next century.

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