Advani Distressed by Babri Destruction

[Guest guest]

Advani was Distressed by Babri Destruction

'in my memory, the BJP leader [Advani] looked distressed, and as

the first young men with iron bars broke through the fence and were

sprinting towards the mosque, he was pleading into his

microphone, "Please don't do this," before he was hustled away...'

 

 

Forced on the back foot by the Opposition campaign against 'tainted'

ministers, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav has been keen to dig

up some dirt on his tormentors.

 

Painted the unquestioned leader of the 'tainted' club in government,

the RJD boss has taken upon himself the task of silencing the

Opposition guns.

 

Thus, he has reopened investigations into the Godhra railway

carnage, which triggered the horrific communal frenzy in Gujarat in

2002. His party's government in Bihar has also foisted a case of

misdeclaration of names in train reservations on BJP leaders in the

state.

 

But it was at a press conference in the capital the other day that

Yadav pulled out his 'trump' card.

 

The minister flashed old copies of Time magazine to buttress his

case that Leader of the Opposition L K Advani was a party to the

conspiracy to demolish the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992,

and that Advani had lied to the Justice M S Liberhan Commission in

denying his involvement in the episode.

 

Repeatedly referring to the American newsweekly as 'Times,' Yadav

claimed that its reporters, Anita Pratap and Jeff Penberthy, had

mingled in the crowd disguised as kar sevaks and later written a

blow-by-blow eyewitness account of the destruction of the mosque.

 

But soon it became quite clear that neither Yadav nor any of his

trusted aides had cared to read the article before citing it

as 'clinching proof' against Advani.

 

Yadav had relied solely on the word of a former Advani acolyte who,

after his ignominious ejection from the former deputy prime

minister's camp, has been trying to worm his way into the RJD

chief's parlour.

 

Yadav, therefore, ended up with egg on his face when an enterprising

newspaper traced Penberthy in Melbourne, Australia, and got him to

recount the cataclysmic events of December 6, 1992.

 

Among other things, Penberthy denied that he or Pratap were

disguised as kar sevaks. Worse, he knocked the bottom out of the

charge against Advani when he wrote in the most unambiguous terms

that 'in my memory, the BJP leader [Advani] looked distressed, and

as the first young men with iron bars broke through the fence and

were sprinting towards the mosque, he was pleading into his

microphone, "Please don't do this," before he was hustled away...'

 

http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/sep/23capbuz.htm

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