A special court in the Indian city of Lucknow has ruled that the demolition of the 16th-century Babri mosque in 1992 by Hindu rioters was not preplanned, acquitting senior leaders from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over a lack of evidence.
The trial court of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) announced the verdict in the 28-year-old case involving 32 accused, including former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, 92, – a one-time mentor of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
All the 32 people were accused of criminal conspiracy and inciting a mob to tear down the Mughal-era mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya, located about 135km (84 miles) east of the state capital, Lucknow, in 1992. The demolition sparked nationwide communal violence that left some 2,000 people dead, most of them Muslims.
Other senior leaders among those acquitted on Wednesday are former ministers Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti, Vinay Katiyar and former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Kalyan Singh.