Delivering a significant verdict with massive political ramifications, the Supreme Court today has restored criminal conspiracy charges against senior BJP leaders L K Advani, Union Minister Uma Bharti, Murli Manohar Joshi and 13 other leaders in the in the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case. 

We allow the appeal filed by CBI”, the court said ordering that additional charges against Advani, weekJoshi and others be framed within 4 weeks.

Invoking its extraordinary constitutional powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, the bench of justices P C Ghose and Rohinton Nariman also transferred the pending separate trial in a Rae Bareilly Magistrate court and clubbed it with criminal proceedings in the Lucknow CBI Court.

The trial court has been directed to hold the day-to-day trial without any adjournment and pronounce judgment within two years Things looked bleak for the BJP and RSS leaders when on April 6, the day the apex court reserved orders the CBI submitted that conspiracy charges needed to be restored to them as there was “prima-facie evidence”.

The impugned order of the Allahabad High Court upholding the lower court order dropping the charge of conspiracy ought to be set aside”, Additional Solicitor General N K Kaul had said commencing CBI’s arguments in the plea challenging dropping of charges against BJP and RSS leaders.

In any case, 120B should go on and they have to be tried somewhere”, Kaul told the bench. During the hearing, Justice Nariman had asked what was the way to get over the technical defects on the ground of which the charges were dropped.

Assuming that charges are going to be reviewed, how do you get over the technical glitch?” Justice Nariman asked CBI.

Noting that the pendency of the cases in Lucknow and Rae Bareilly courts itself indicates “evasion of justice”, the court had proposed to invoke its extraordinary constitutional powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to transfer the pending trial in a Rae Bareilly Magistrate court and club it with criminal proceedings in the Lucknow CBI Court against “lakhs of unknown  kar sevaks””.

800 WITNESSES TO TESTIFY

The court indicated that it will order the CBI Court to conduct a time-bound trial and complete it in 2 years. So far 195 witnesses have been examined in the Lucknow case while a whopping 800 witnesses remain to testify.

In Rae Bareilly, 57 witnesses have been examined while 105 wait their turn in court.  Advani,  Joshi and 6  other politicians were originally accused in the Rae Bareilly case for giving provocative speeches.

Besides the CBI plea for restoring the charges, the court was also delivering the verdict on the separate petition filed by one Haji Mahboob Ahmad, President of Mahafiz-Masjid-Wa-Maqabir’ and Muddai BabriMasjid which claimed that with the BJP regime and a “participant” Rajnath Singh as Home Minister, CBI.

The original petitioner against dropping of criminal conspiracy charges may not press for its restoration Earlier the court had asked CBI why conspiracy charges cannot be restored against BJP and RSS leaders L K Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti, Kalyan Singh, Vinay Katiyar and 15 other leaders.
It had also hinted that it would club the two separate hearings going on in Rae Bareli and Lucknow courts.

CBI had charge-sheeted 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 the IPC.

It had subsequently added charges under section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC which was quashed by the special court whose decision was upheld by the Allahabad High Court.

The special court had dropped framing of charges by the Lucknow court on a technical ground that the court was not set up as per a proper notification by the government.

CBI challenged in SC on May 21, 2010, the order of HC dropping conspiracy charges.