Babri Masjid case: Allahabad High Court to decide on admissibility of 'criminal appeal'

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Monday said that the revision petition filed against the acquittals of all 32 accused, including former deputy prime minister LK Advani, then UP chief minister Kalyan Singh, senior BJP leaders MM Joshi, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar, Sadhvi Ritambhara, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, in Babri Masjid demolition case was not maintainable and hence directed its office to convert and treat the revision as a criminal appeal.
The court has fixed August 1 as the next date of hearing.
The direction came from the bench of Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh who posted the matter for next hearing on the question of admissibility of the criminal appeal.
The petition has been preferred by two Ayodhya residents - Haji Mahmood Ahmad and Syed Akhlaq Ahmad.
The duo claimed in the petition that they were witnesses to the demolition of the disputed structure on December 6, 1992.
After a long legal battle, the special CBI court on September 30, 2020, pronounced the judgment in the criminal trial and acquitted all the accused. The trial judge had refused to believe newspaper cuttings, video clips as evidence as the originals of the same were not produced, while the entire edifice of the case rested on these pieces of documentary evidence.
The trial judge also held that the Central Bureau of Investigation could not produce any evidence that the accused had a meeting of minds with the karsevaks who demolished the structure.
The petitioners have now pleaded that the trial court committed error in not convicting the accused whereas ample evidence was on record.
"The trial judge did not appreciate the evidence of conspiracy in the right perspective," the petitioners alleged.