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Journalism of Courage
The Opposition is barking up the wrong tree when it accuses the CBI of dropping the conspiracy charge related to the demolition of Babri Masjid against L K Advani and other Sangh Parivar leaders.
The CBI was forced to let those leaders off the hook as far as the conspiracy charge is concerned because of a wilful omission by two successive governments in UP — the BJP govt of Rajnath Singh and the BJP-supported government of Mayawati.
Both governments failed to cure a petty technical defect pointed out by the Allahabad High Court: viz, the FIR related to the inflammatory speeches was referred to a special court in Lucknow without taking the consent of the Chief Justice of the High Court.
Worse, Rajnath and Mayawati ignored the HC’s express advice that the state could still cure the technical defect by consulting the then Chief Justice, howsoever belatedly, on the matter.
Taking advantage of this uncured defect, the Mayawati govt obtained the SC’s consent eight months ago to its scheme of trying the leaders separately in an ordinary court in Rae Bareli purely on the charge of delivering the inflammatory speeches.
As per the Mayawati government’s scheme, the original demolition case pending before the Lucknow special court is now targetted only at kar sevaks, implying thereby that they had hatched the conspiracy on their own without the complicity of the eight leaders whose names have since been deleted from the case.
The initiation of such parallel proceedings in Lucknow and Rae Bareli has also raised the danger of the Babri matter being hit by the constitutional bar on ‘‘double jeopardy’’. In other words, since the kar sevaks are already being tried for conspiracy in Lucknow, the CBI is barred from pressing the same charge against the leaders in another case in Rae Bareli.
