BJP patriarch and former deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani (92), who led the Ram temple movement and campaigned for demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, on Friday pleaded innocent and insisted that he was falsely implicated in the conspiracy behind the mosque demolition in December 1992 by the then Congress government out of "political malice."He, however, admitted he was present in Ayodhya on December 6 on the day the ‘kar sevaks’ brought down the mosque; this was done in his presence and it was he who had mobilised the Hindus through a Ram Rath Yatra in 1990 to campaign against the mosque, so that a temple could be built in its place.
His statement was recorded through video-conferencing at his Prithviraj Road residence by Special CBI judge Surendra Kumar Yadav. He was grilled for four hours by the lawyers of the CBI, which had registered the case of demolition conspiracy against him and 31 others. His response was ditto that of former union minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi (86), who also deposed through video conferencing.
(On Thursday, Joshi had dubbed the prosecution witnesses in the case as "liars". "The entire investigation was conducted under political influence and I was charged on the basis of false and fabricated evidence," the BJP veteran had told the court.)
The judge is racing against time to finish the trial by holding a day-to-day hearing, so that he can pronounce the judgment by August 31, as directed by the Supreme Court. The court had given him extension beyond his retirement, thereby avoiding appointing a new judge to go through the 28-year-old case de novo (from the scratch).Advani was the 29th of the 32 accused whose statement has been recorded. Another accused, Satish Pradhan (79), a former Shiv Sena MP who could not keep date with the court early this week, will now record his statement on Tuesday.
Among others who have registered their statements as accused include former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh and former MP Chief Minister Uma Bharti, both of whom belong to the BJP.Union Home Minister Amit Shah had dropped in at Advani’s residence two days ago to discuss the video-conferencing facilities he required for deposing before the Lucknow court.Three lawyers, Vimal Kumar Srivastava, K K Mishra and Abhishek Ranjan, were in the court to assist Advani who was subjected to pointed questions by advocates Lalit Singh, P Chakravarti and R K Yadav, who appeared for the prosecution (CBI).
