When the Supreme Court last year decided to pave the way for the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, after placing an unequal burden of pr...
When the Supreme Court last year decided to pave the way for the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, after placing an unequal burden of proof on the Muslim parties in the century-old dispute, many commentators noted that that the judges had rewarded the very people involved in a criminal act. After all, the court had described the demolition of the mosque in 1992 an “egregious violation of the rule of law”.
This week, that became hard fact. Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders Nritya Gopal Das and Champat Rai were appointed president and general secretary of the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which will be responsible for building a temple on the disputed site.
Both Das and Rai stand accused in the case against those who demolished the mosque in 1992. The charges against them include incitement and rioting. In other words, these men have now literally been rewarded for an illegal ac, and have been put in charge of the site on which they carried out their “egregious violations” of the rule of law.
The manner in which this happened involved a small sleight of hand.
The government set up the trust a few weeks ago, but did not name these two leaders – presumably out of fear...
