A number of Social and Human Rights organisations organised a candle march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament Street on December 5 marking the 17th anniversary of the demolition of historic Babri Masjid, and demanded immediate punitive action against those indicted in the Liberhan Commission Report.
Speaking on the occasion, President B. R. Ambedkar Sewa Dal Archana Singh said the Commission has already delayed to submit the Report so the government should not make any delay to take action against the perpetrators who brought down the historic Babri Masjid.
General Secretary All India Milli Council Manzoor Alam said if the government feels it difficult to punish all the perpetrators who had roles in demolition of the Mosque then at least it should punish those named by the Liberhan Commission. He said, “If the Government does not take action and teach a lesson to the guilty, we will teach them (the government) a lesson in the coming election.”
Founding member of Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan Zakia Jauhar sought justice and adequate compensation for the victims of Hindutva terrorist attack on Babri Masjid and demanded ban on such communal organisations like RSS, VHP, Shiv Sena, etc who played a role in the demolition.
Secretary Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Mujtaba Farooq also appealed to the Union Government to take legal action immediately against the Hindutva leader and guilty officers named in the Liberhan Report.
Advocate Firoz Khan Ghazi said this was the first terrorist attack in history in which a place of worship was brought down to ground by lakhs of Hindutva activists, which also caused a number of communal flare-ups in other parts of the country.
The nation wants to know what action the Central Government is going to take. In the past too, those indicted by different commissions for communal riots have gone scot-free as in the case of Srikrishna Commission Report.
The Report has rightly placed individual culpability for the demolition on a total of 68 persons, that bulk of them drawn from the Sangh Parivar. Therefore it is high time that the charges filed and cases registered against them. The Central government must act against the Sangh Parivar organisations and contain their bank accounts being used for nefarious designs.
The Social and Human Rights organisations said that kith and kin of those killed in the aftermath of the demolition of Babri Masjid need the same treatment applied in the case of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots so far as their compensation and rehabilitation is concerned.
A serious shortcoming in the Liberhan Report is its silence on the role of former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao who did nothing to stop the efforts to raze the historic Masjid.
The organisations urged the Election Commission of India to initiate action against the Hindutva political organisations, including BJP, RSS, VHP, Shiv Sena, etc.
The march was organised by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Sewa Dal, All India Milli Council, All India New Democracy, Insaan Dost Council, Samajik Nayay Morcha, Movement for Empowerment of Muslims, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Action Aid, South Asian Council for Minorities, Delhi Catholic Church, Haryana Gurudwara Sikh Committee, Peoples Movement of India, Budh Upasak Sangh and others.