The Hindu : SC to hear plea against Advani next week

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Wednesday, Aug 20, 2003

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SC to hear plea against Advani next week

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 19. The Supreme Court, while declining to stay the trial in the Babri Masjid demolition case pending before the Rae Bareily court, directed listing of a petition for hearing next week challenging the dropping of the "conspiracy" charge against the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, the Union Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, and six others in the supplementary chargesheet filed on May 30. A three-Judge Bench, comprising the Chief Justice V.N. Khare, Justice H.K. Sema and Justice S.B. Sinha, directed listing of the writ petition filed by an advocate, Wajahat Ansari, along with an application filed by Mohd. Aslam alias Bhure, seeking review of the apex court's order permitting the trial to go on in a Rae Bareily court instead of at Lucknow.

The Bench, in its order passed during `mention' time, said: "let the writ petition be tagged along with the review petition and listed for hearing before an appropriate bench after one week".

It declined the request of counsel for the petitioner for stay of all further proceedings.

Besides the CBI and the Uttar Pradesh Government, the petitioner cited the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore, Sadvi Ritambara and the BJP MPs, Vishnu Hari Dalmiya, Uma Bharti and Vinay Katiyar, as respondents.

The petitioner said he was deeply aggrieved by the CBI action in filing a fresh chargesheet on May 30 by deleting the charge of "conspiracy" (120 B Indian Penal Code) because the same was gross and shocking abuse of the due procedure of law. He said it was a colourable and malafide exercise of authority. The message given across the country was that by delaying the trial, somehow or the other, it was easy to escape culpability by manipulating the procedure and deleting uncomfortable charges such as "criminal conspiracy". He said merely because 10 years had elapsed, it would not in any way mitigate or take away the factum of criminal conspiracy against the accused persons. The petitioner submitted that when the apex court was seized of the review petition, the trial should have proceeded on the basis of the original composite chargesheet filed by the CBI on October 4/5, 1993 under Section 120 B read with other sections of the IPC.

But taking advantage of the apex court's order of November 29, 2002, permitting the trial to proceed in the Rae Bareili court, the CBI, under political pressure, had submitted a truncated chargesheet omitting the conspiracy charge.

Explaining the malafide intentions of the CBI, the petitioner alleged that the Public Prosecutor, Chaube, who had been conducting the case since 1993, was replaced suddenly by an advocate, S.S. Gandhi, junior of the Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley. Hence, he prayed for quashing of the chargesheet filed on May 30 and an interim stay of all further proceedings pending before the Rae Bareily court.

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