Law takes its course...
The Supreme Court has pronounced its verdict and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is sitting pretty. But not many know that it was the country’s premiere agency itself which had dropped the criminal conspiracy charge under section 120-B of the IPC against Advani and others while submitting a supplementary charge sheet in May 2003 before Rae Bareli Special CBI Court. It was alleged that the CBI acted at the behest of the AB Vajpayee government then.
Clubbing the two cases — 197/92 and 198/92 — the investigating agency had filed a joint charge sheet at the Special CBI Court (Ayodhya Prakaran) in September 1997. Section 120-B was slapped in the charge sheet against the named accused, which included Advani, Uma Bharti and Murli Manohar Joshi.
The same, however, was dropped when the supplementary charge sheet was filed at the Rae Bareli Court on May 31, 2003, though other charges under Sections 153-A, 153-B (spreading communal frenzy), Section 147, 149 (rioting/committing a crime and 505 (creating ill will) were retained.
What had baffled legal experts then was that when other sections relate to criminal conspiracy, how could the CBI drop Section 120-B against the accused. “If at all the CBI could frame any case against Advani and others, it is the criminal conspiracy (Section 120-B),” late PK Chaube, then a senior CBI Counsel pursuing the Babri case on behalf of the investigating agency, had once told this correspondent during hearing of the case in Lucknow.
“Dropping criminal conspiracy charge against the accused means that there is virtually no case against them and they will be bailed out without much difficulty on remaining charges,” he had then predicted, not knowing that the CBI will go to the Supreme Court to correct its own blunder.
A forthright Counsel who would not mind speaking against his own client when it comes to law and its interpretation, late Chaube’s stand in 2003 got vindicated on Wednesday when Supreme Court directed to revive criminal conspiracy charge against Advani and others.
What was more painful for the late CBI counsel was that the CBI had dropped the most important charge at a time when the investigating agency had told the court to produce video clippings on July 30, 2003 to prove how Advani and others had incited kar sevaks to demolish the mosque. It had also listed 49 witnesses, including 22 journalists, to substantiate charges against these political bigwigs.
The CBI had then argued that charges were not framed under section 120-B as it did not find any mention in FIRs lodged on December 6, 1992. The argument is questionable as investigating agencies file charge sheet on the basis of its investigation and not solely relying on the FIRs.
The biggest question then is why the CBI went for an appeal in the Supreme Court for revival of the same charge?
The issue of CBI diluting its own case had rocked the Parliament in July 2003 and then Law Minister Arun Jaitley had made a statement claiming that criminal conspiracy charge was never slapped by the agency against the eight accused.
In his famous verdict on February 12, 2001 Justice Jagdish Bhalla had observed that “I am of the opinion that no illegality has been committed by the courts while taking cognizance of a joint/consolidated charge-sheet on the ground that all the offences were committed in the course of the same transaction and to accomplish the CONSPIRACY; that the evidence for all the offences is almost same and therefore these offences can not be separated from each other irrespective of the fact that 49 different FIRs were lodged.” (page number 109 of Justice Bhalla Judgement)
When the High Court had upheld the CBI's consolidated charge sheet, which included criminal conspiracy charge, then there was no justification in CBI withdrawing it against Advani and others at a later stage.
Justice Bhalla's judgment did drop cases against the eight accused on technical grounds but it had upheld criminal conspiracy (120-B) charge against all 49 accused including Advani, Dr Joshi and Uma Bharti.
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 "Babri case - MM Joshi- Advani- Uma bharti - kalyan singh")
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