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Trial and errors

ALTHOUGH THE BABRI Masjid was brought down ten long years ago, a slew of legal and procedural issues held up the trial of the Union Ministers, L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, and a few other Sangh Parivar leaders accused for their role in the demolition. Now, the Supreme Court's recent ruling has raised several crucial questions about the course this politically significant case will take. The Court's decision that the trial could take place in the Rae Bareli special court as decided by the Mayawati Government in effect appears set to delay the case much further. For one, there is the likelihood that the whole process will have to be gone through all over again, beginning with the filing of a fresh chargesheet. For another, the prosecuting agency is the CBI which, despite its statutory autonomy on criminal matters, now functions under a Central Government that — to grossly understate the point — is not exactly keen on expediting the case.

The charges framed against Mr. Advani, Mr. Joshi, Uma Bharti and others have been done by a sessions court in Lucknow and been upheld by the Allahabad High Court. Ironically, they may have to be framed all over again by a Rae Bareli special court of lower judicial ranking. But the significance of this goes beyond such legal nuances or ironies. The ball is now in the CBI's court and, not surprisingly, there are serious apprehensions about how the investigative agency will conduct itself in this matter. How quickly will the CBI file a fresh chargesheet? Will the chargesheet be as watertight as possible, free from lacunae that could be exploited by the accused? Will the best case for the prosecution be made out during the trial? It is on such questions that the CBI will be judged — an assessment that will determine whether it has exercised its statutory autonomy (conferred by the Supreme Court) or whether it has played to the tune of the political establishment. Needless to say, it would be unpardonable if a case of such enormous significance were allowed to be derailed by either extraneous manipulation or pressure.

The case would never have had to be tried all over again at Rae Bareli if it wasn't for a procedural flaw, which eventually led the Allahabad High Court last year to set aside the charges framed against Mr. Advani and seven others accused in this case by the Lucknow special court. The flaw had nothing to do with the substance of the prosecution's case but lay in failing to seek the prior concurrence of the High Court before sending the chargesheet to the CBI special court for trial. As a result, the Uttar Pradesh Government's 1993 notification assigning the trial to the Lucknow special court was quashed. While quashing the notification, the Allahabad High Court made it more than clear that the defect was "curable" and the Uttar Pradesh Government could issue a fresh notification to prosecute those who were reprieved. Cynically, but perhaps not surprisingly, the Rajnath Singh Government which was then in power made it quite clear it would not issue a fresh notification.

Following the State Assembly election, the Chief Minister, Mayawati, who is propped up by the BJP, adopted the same position. But her Government issued another notification appointing a special judge at Rae Bareli to try the case. It is ironic that Ms. Mayawati should now interpret the Supreme Court's ruling as a vindication of her Government's position. It was only last year, at a time when she was not allied to the BJP, that she had loudly clamoured for a fresh notification to be issued so that the trial of the eight accused could continue. Her change of heart is another example of how the Ayodhya case has become a victim of the politics of expediency. Ms. Mayawati's stance, that the CBI is free to file a fresh case at Rae Bareli if it wishes, has pushed the case to the very point where it started. It has contributed to the state of affairs in which a case of enormous significance has been (at best) further delayed or (at worst) sent into a limbo.

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