Babri Mosque case: Pakistan slams 'shameful' acquittals

By Islamuddin Sajid

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AA) - Pakistan on Wednesday strongly condemned the acquittal of all the accused in the historical Babri Mosque case by an Indian court, terming it a “shameful” verdict.

“Pakistan strongly condemns today’s shameful acquittal of the criminals responsible for demolishing the centuries-old Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992,” said the country’s Foreign Ministry in a statement.

A special court in India on Wednesday acquitted all the 32 surviving accused in the Babri Mosque demolition case.

The verdict in the criminal case related to the Babri Mosque demolition came almost 28 years after it was pulled down by a frenzied mob in the north Indian town of Ayodhya.

"Taking almost three decades to decide on the criminal act which was televised live and happened as a result of well-planned Rath Yatras and on the instigation to mobs by the accused BJP, VHP and other leaders of Sangh Parivar, tells the world that the Hindutva-inspired Indian judiciary miserably failed to deliver the justice again," the ministry said.

“The demolition of the mosque had resulted in BJP-led communal violence leading to thousands of killings. If there was a semblance of justice in the so-called largest ‘democracy’, the individuals, who had boasted of the criminal act publicly, could not have been set free,” the statement said.

“This is yet another manifestation of the pliant judiciary under the extremist BJP-RSS regime in which extremist ‘Hindutva’ ideology takes precedence over all principles of justice and international norms,” it noted.

Referring to the last year’s Indian Supreme Court's verdict which handed over the site of the historic mosque to Hindus, Pakistan said: "The Indian top court set a wrong direction earlier by handing over the Babri Masjid premises for building of Ram Mandir to the very Hindu parties which had demolished the historic mosque.

“The acquittal today is even against that verdict which had noted that the demolition was ‘an egregious violation of rule of law’.

"These reprehensible developments with state complicity, coupled with RSS-BJP’s deep-rooted hatred against minorities, particularly Muslims, point to India’s fast descent into a Hindu Rashtra [Hindu polity], where minorities have been relegated as second class citizens," Pakistan said.

“Willful targeting of Muslims is rampant in today’s India -- ranging from efforts to disenfranchise Muslims under anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the looming National Register of Citizens (NRC), and a well-organized and orchestrated pogrom of Muslims in New Delhi with state complicity in February this year, to other anti-Muslim measures like demonizing, dispossessing, marginalizing and subjecting Muslims to targeted violence.

"The BJP-RSS anti-Muslim agenda is most visible in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJK) which remains under continued military siege and the BJP continues to implement its sinister policies to change the demographic structure of the occupied territory," the statement further added.

Pakistan urged the Indian government to ensure safety, security and protection of minorities, particularly Muslims, and their places of worship and other Islamic sites to which the Hindu extremists and zealots have laid claims.

“The world community, the United Nations and relevant international organizations are expected to play their role in safeguarding the Islamic heritage sites in India from the extremist Hindutva regime and ensure protection of religious rights of minorities in India,” the statement concluded.