The Supreme Court on Saturday dismissed a plea made by the Shia Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh claiming the Babri Masjid was a Shia waqf (endowment).
The five-judge Ayodhya Bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi dismissed the case for an inordinate delay of 24,964 days in filing the petition. The court pronounced the judgment on this petition separately, minutes before it delivered its verdict in 14 civil appeals in the main Ayodhya title dispute.
The Shia Board had contended that its Sunni counterpart, who had been on the frontlines of the 70-year-old Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute, were mere interlopers led by “hardliners, fanatics and non-believers” who do not want an amicable settlement with the Hindu sects involved.
The Shia Board had traced the lineage of the razed mosque to Mir Baqi, a Shia noble in Mughal Emperor Babur’s court. They had claimed that, unlike the Sunni Central Waqf Board, they wanted a peaceful co-existence with the Hindu community.
