New Delhi : A special CBI court in Lucknow today (September 30) acquitted all the accused in the Babri demolition case and said the incident was not pre-planned. Sessions Trial Nos. 344/1994, 423/2017 and 796/2019 in the case of Pawan Kumar Pandey and others against the government were heard by all the parties on September 16. After this, Surendra Kumar Yadav, Presiding Officer, Special Court, Ayodhya Case, Lucknow had fixed September 30, 2020 as the date for giving the verdict. There were a total of 49 accused in the Babri demolition case, of whom 32 are currently alive and 17 have died.
These are the 32 accused in the Babri Masjid case
LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar, Sadhvi Ritambhara, Mahant Nritya Gopalaj Das, Dr. Ram Vilas Vedanti, Champat Rai, Mahant Dharmadas, Satish Pradhan, Pawan Kumar Pandey, Lallu Singh, Prakash Sharma, Vijay Bahadur Singh, Santosh Dubey, Gandhi Yadav, Ramji Gupta, Braj Bhushan Sharan Singh, Kamlesh Tripathi, Ramchandra Khatri, Jai Bhagwan Goyal , Om Prakash Pandey, Amar Nath Goyal, Jaybhan Singh Pavaya, Maharaj Swami Sakshi, Vinay Kumar Rai, Naveen Bhai Shukla, RN Srivastava, Acharya Dharmendra Dev, Sudhir Kumar Kakkad and Dharmendra Singh Gurjar.
These 17 accused have died
Among the 49 accused, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore, Vishnu Hari Dalmiya, Moreshwar Sawe, Mahant Avidyanath, Mahamandleshwar Jagdish Muni Maharaj, Baikunth Lal Sharma, Paramahansa Ramchandra Das, Dr. Satish Nagar, Balasaheb Thackeray, SSP DB Rai, Ramesh Pratap Singh, Mahatyagi Hargovind Singh, Laxmi Narayan Das, Ram Narayan Das and Vinod Kumar Bansal have passed away.
Special CBI Court observed that the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition was not pre-planned. https://t.co/dwpyHkDM6X
— ANI (@ANI) September 30, 2020
The hearing was expedited following the directions of the Supreme Court
On 19 April 2017, the Supreme Court directed the CBI Special Court, Lucknow Ayodhya to dispose of all the cases and said that the trial should be completed within 2 years. On May 21, 2017, the Special CBI Court started regular hearings in the Ayodhya case. On May 8, 2020, the Supreme Court directed that the trial should end in 3 months and the date was fixed as August 31, 2020. However, as the trial did not end and the lockdown was brought in force, the apex court fixed September 30 as the last date to end the trial. The hearing of both the parties was completed on September 1 and the date of judgment was fixed by the Special Judge on September 30, 2020.