When Satya Pal Jain, the senior advocate who represented BJP leader L.K. Advani before the Liberhan commission, asked the former deputy prime minister what he felt after deposing, the latter's reply was simple. "Advani said he has not spoken a single lie in his entire life and felt satisfied,’’ said Jain. The one-man Liberhan commission was set up to probe the criminal conspiracy in the destruction of the Babri Masjid.
What made Jain hopeful that BJP leaders like M.M. Joshi, Advani, Uma Bharti and others will be acquitted in the CBI probe was a lack of cogent, conclusive and convincing evidence to establish that these leaders had either instigated or planned the December 6 demolition. Jain claimed that these leaders had in fact appealed to the karsevaks to come down from the domes.
As Advani and others walked free on Wednesday with the CBI special court in Lucknow acquitting all accused, many breathed a sigh of relief. S.V.M. Tripathi, then director general of police in Uttar Pradesh, told THE WEEK that there was no evidence to prove that it was a pre-planned conspiracy and it was wrong to suggest that there had been "rehearsals" for the demolition.
‘’I was the DGP of police [then]. If you ask me if there was any political pressure, I can tell you with certainty that the chief minister Kalyan Singh at no point ever indicated that the structure should not be protected,’’ Tripathi told THE WEEK.
The then police chief said that there were no intelligence inputs to claim this was a pre-planned conspiracy. "The government and the party implicitly believed in the discipline of the karsevaks and felt they could control them. But this did not happen," he said. Tripathi recalled how the then Kalyan Singh government discussed with him and the then district magistrate the option of firing if the situation got out of hand. ‘’There were pilgrims, women and children mixed in the crowds and the police decided to use firing only as a last resort,’’ he said.
28 years later, the sensitivity of the case can be gauged from the fact that 1,50,000 police officers were deployed on the ground in Uttar Pradesh in the run up to the court judgment. Some of the key officials involved in the case indicated that they may be under surveillance till the judicial process was over. And then there were other bureaucrats and cops like U.P. Bajpai, then deputy inspector general of police in Faizabad, who said they wanted to steer clear of any controversy. In his 80s, Bajpai said he is living a retired life now and everything about the case has been discussed in public domain.
The CBI legal team indicated that they had conducted the investigations without any external pressure and put in a lot of hard work to satisfy the judicial process. What remains to be seen is whether the dust around the Babri demolition case has settled completely.