By IANS,
Chandigarh : The Liberhan Commission report on the Babri Masjid demolition has voluminous and exhaustive testimonies of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, according to a lawyer associated with the panel.
The testimony of Kalyan Singh runs into over 400 pages while those of Advani and Joshi run into nearly 200 pages each, Anupam Gupta, a senior lawyer who was associated with the commission as its counsel, said here Tuesday.
The 16th century mosque was demolished Dec 6, 1992 by radical Hindu groups that believed it was built on the birthplace of Lord Ram. At the time, Kalyan Singh was heading a BJP government in Uttar Pradesh and the Congress’ P.V. Narasimha Rao was the prime minister.
Kalyan Singh’s testimony was recorded over seven months between December 2003 and June 2004.
Gupta, who cross-examined top leaders of the BJP and other parties as counsel of the commission between 1999 and 2005, later disassociated himself from it owing to differences with Justice M.S. Liberhan, a former chief justice of the Andhra Pradesh high court.
“I am not privy to the contents of the final report. I can only comment after the report is made public. I may write a book on this issue depending on what the findings are,” Gupta told IANS.
The Liberhan commission, constituted just 10 days after the demolition, took nearly 17 years to give its final report on the controversy. It submitted its voluminous report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday.