Lucknow: Those acquitted in the case include former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, former Union Ministers M.M. Joshi, Uma Bharti, former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh and Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, among others.
Special CBI judge S.K. Yadav, in his verdict, said that the demotion was not a planned incident but a spontaneous act.
The court further said the CBI had failed to substantiate the charges levelled against the 32 accused persons for the past 28 years. The court also said that the video recordings submitted to the court were ‘tampered with’.
As soon as the court announced the acquittal of the accused, jubilation broke out outside the court, in Ayodhya and Lucknow, where supporters of the leaders were present to celebrate the occasion.
The special CBI court heard the case daily. Central agency CBI produced 351 witnesses and about 600 documentary evidence in the case in the court. A total of 48 people were booked in this case, out of which 17 died during the hearing of the case.
In this case Lalkush Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar, Saghvi Ritambhara, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Dr. Ram Vilas Vedanti, Champat Rai, Mahant Dharmadas, Satish Pradhan, Pawan Kumar Pandey, Lallu Singh, Prakash Sharma, Vijay Bahadur Singh, Santosh Dubey, Gandhi Yadav, Ramji Gupta, Braj Bhushan Sharan Singh, Kamlesh Tripathi, Ramchandra Khatri, Jai Bhagwan Goyal, Om Prakash Pandey, Amar Nath Goyal, Jaibhan Singh Powaiya, Maharaj Swami Sakshi, Vinay Kumar Rai, Naveen Bhai Shukla, RN Srivastava, Acharya Dhendra Dev, Sudhir Kumar Kakkar and Dharmendra Singh Gurjar were the accused.
