NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 12: Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande and the BJP MP from Faizabad, Vinay Katiyar, who were both present during the demolition of Babri Masjid, have punctured the ``bomb theory'' floated by RSS chief K S Sudarshan recently.``I never said a bomb explosion caused destruction of the Babri mosque,'' Deshpande, who is co-chairperson of Gandhi Samadhi at Rajghat, told The Indian Express today. She added she was not an expert who could detect the use of explosives in the demolition of the mosque on December 6, 1992.Deshpande, whose interview to an author, Harish Chander, seven years ago had led to fresh controversy on the use of explosives in the demolition, denied she had given a clean chit to the three ministers - Uma Bharti, L K Advani and M M Joshi. ``They were asking kar sevaks to come down from the domes not to prevent the mosque from being demolished but to avoid their getting killed under the debris of the domes,'' she said.However, in her seven-year-old interview (a transcript of which is available with The Indian Express) she seemed to have exonerated the BJP leaders. ``P V (Narasimha Rao) saheb is not to be blamed and I think those (A B Vajpayee and L K Advani) who promised him that nothing would happen there are also not to be blamed as some others were responsible. It was perhaps beyond their control also,'' she had told Chander, blaming the whole thing on ``hired experts''.The founder-president of the Bajrang Dal, Katiyar, has described Sudarshan's bomb theory as an ``insult to the kar sevaks who laid down their lives for the Ram temple in Ayodhya''.``There was, of course, an explosion in Ayodhya eight years ago - an explosion of the people's sentiments and not a chemical explosion, as Sudarshan would like us to believe,'' he says. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan, who was addressing kar sevaks when the demolition started, could also vouch for it, said Katiyar.He says he had, along with security forces, searched the site but found no substance in messages being received by the intelligence agencies that the kar sevaks were trying to smuggle in bombs inside coconut shells.Deshpande claimed to have gone to Ayodhya to protect the mosque with the help of Gandhian volunteers. Asked what made her keep silent for eight years, she said she was too sad. She remained non-committal on whether the three BJP leaders were provoking kar sevaks for razing the mosque or not. ``There was lot of noise and slogan-shouting. I really could not make out who was saying what,'' she said.In her interview to Chander, she had claimed that experts in demolishing buildings - and not the kar sevaks - had destroyed the mosque. ``The domes were felled from inside as they leaned to one side before falling. It can be done only by experts,'' she said today.Katiyar supports Deshpande's statement about the manner in which the mosque was pulled down but stresses that no expert was hired for the job. Walls of the 600-year-old structure were already collapsing under the impact of iron pipes - taken out from barricades - used by the kar sevaks. ``It was then easy for the kar sevaks to pull down the sturdy domes with the help of ropes snatched from the security forces. This explains the leaning of the domes before the collapsed,'' he said.Katiyar claims the mob of two lakh kar sevaks ignored appeals made by all BJP and VHP leaders not to demolish the mosque. ``The fact that some of them even pulled VHP general secretary Ashok Singhal's dhoti for attempting to prevent them from mounting the domes indicated their anguish and fury,'' he said.``The kar sevaks were fed up with the symbolic kar seva they were asked to perform and their pent-up anger resulted in the temple movement getting out of the leaders' hands,'' he asserted.
