The past might come back to haunt SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, if a petition in the Supreme Court has its way.
As per reports [1][2], a petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Tuesday which sought that an FIR be filed against Mulayam Singh Yadav, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh for ordering police firing on “Kar Sewaks” in Ayodhya back on 30th October, 1990.
These Kar Sewaks had assembled in the city for carrying out a peaceful agitation for the construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.
The petitioner in this case is Rana Sangram Singh, a resident of Lucknow district who has challenged a May 3, 2016 order of the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench which rejected his plea in this matter.
The reason cited for this rejection was that the incident had not taken place in the territorial jurisdiction of Lucknow. Thus the High Court said, it could not direct the registration of cognisable offences on the basis of statements made by leaders of political parties to their constituents.
Rana Sangram Singh wants that an FIR be registered against Mulayam based on his statement dated 6th February 2014, wherein he had said that he ordered the police firing, which had resulted in the death of 16 people.
In fact, the SP supremo had justified his action as recently as 2016. Speaking at a book launch, Mulayam sought to justify the firing that claimed lives of several Kar-Sevaks by saying :
“We had to fire. When I tried to justify my action, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members called me the murderer of humanity. If we had not fired at them, imagine what the Muslim population would have thought. Then how would I justify my position as chief minster.”
The disputed land in Ayodhya has also recently been in the news for other reasons.
This August, the Shia Wakf Board had in a petition to the Supreme Court stated that the Babri Masjid was built after demolishing a temple which stood there – a fact that is denied by Sunni board and some leftist historians.
Recent days have also seen multiple claimants emerge, who have staked claim over this site, which currently is under the ownership of the Sunni Central Wakf Board.
First the Shia Wakf board had put forth historical arguments in the Supreme Court affidavit that the Masjid was largely constructed by Shia Muslims and thus should come under Shia Wakf properties.
If this wasn’t enough, a person claiming to be a Mughal descendent came out of the blue to stake a claim over the Babri masjid site. The decedent named Prince Yakub Habeebuddin Tucy claims to be the DNA proven descendent of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar.
