Press Statement
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:
The decision of the Rae Bareilly court to discharge L.K. Advani as an accused from the Babri Masjid demolition case confirms the worst apprehensions about the scuttling of the case by the CBI. The CBI filed a diluted charge sheet against the eight accused before the court by dropping charge of criminal conspiracy under section 120 (b) of the IPC. Further, the CBI stated that it had no audio-visual evidence to present against the chief accused in the case.
It may be recalled that 49 BJP and VHP leaders including L.K. Advani had been charge-sheeted by a designated court in Lucknow on September 9, 1997 on a charge sheet filed by the CBI. The order by the additional sessions judge stated "From our description it is concluded, that in the present case, a criminal conspiracy to demolish the disputed structure of Ram Janam Bhoomi/Babri Masjid was hatched by the accused persons in the beginning of 1990 and was completed on 6.12.92. Shri Lal Krishan Advani and others hatched criminal conspiracies to demolish the disputed premises on different times at different places."
It is on the basis of finding a prima facie case that charges were framed against L.K. Advani, Murli Mahohar Joshi, Uma Bharati and others. This charge sheet was challenged in the High Court and it was struck down on purely technical ground on a lapse on the part of the state government. The Rajnath Singh government refused to make the necessary corrections and issue a fresh notification. Subsequently, after the matter was taken to the Supreme Court, the Mayawati government issued a fresh notification but the government which was dependent on the BJP referred the case to the Rae Bareilly court abinitio (to begin afresh).
It is in this background that the Rae Bareilly court has now on the basis of a diluted charge sheet and a CBI which refused to stand by its own original charges, discharged L.K. Advani. This is not the court which has acquitted L.K. Advani, but the CBI.
It would be a grave miscarriage of justice if those responsible for the demolition of the Babri Masjid are not made to answer to the charge before a court of law. The CBI will have to take necessary steps to prevent this happening. L.K. Advani will have to face the charges leveled against him by the original CBI charge sheet admitted in 1997 if the rule of law has to prevail.