ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday condemned an Indian court’s decision to acquit over a lack of evidence a number of politicians and Hindu religious leaders accused of conspiring to demolish the 16th-century Babri Mosque in the eastern Indian city of Ayodhya.
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the late 1980s and 1990s led a campaign to build a Hindu temple at the disputed site of the mosque, claiming that it was built by the first Mughal ruler, Babar, who demolished a temple raised in the birthplace of Ram, a major deity of Hinduism.
In this Dec. 7, 1992 photograph, rioters shout and wave banners as they stand on the top of a stone wall and celebrate the Dec. 6 destruction of the 16th century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. (AFP/File)
On Dec. 6, 1992, responding to the BJP leaders’ call, hundreds of rioters gathered at the site to tear down the mosque, sparking nationwide communal violence that left more than 2,000 people dead.
“Pakistan strongly condemns today’s shameful acquittal of the criminals responsible for demolishing the centuries-old Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.
“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 read.
The Foreign Office called on the Indian government to “ensure safety, security and protection of minorities, particularly Muslims and their places of worship and other Islamic sites on which the Hindu extremists and zealots have laid claims.”
It said the international community and the United Nations “are expected to play their role” in safeguarding Islamic heritage sites from India’s own regime.
