New Delhi: Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi must be a relieved man Saturday after having decided on the 70-year-old Ayodhya title dispute in favour of the infant god, Ram Lalla.
Justice Gogoi will treat his fellow Constitution-bench justices S A Bobde, D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer to dinner at a Delhi five-star hotel on Saturday evening. This is to unwind, sources in the Supreme Court’s administrative department told the ThePrint.
Read | Ayodhya verdict: Disputed site for Ram temple, separate land for mosque
In a unanimous verdict on Saturday, the Supreme Court said a trust should be set up by the Centre within three months to help build the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya’s disputed site. The court added that the Muslims should be given five acres elsewhere in Ayodhya to construct a mosque in lieu of the one demolished by kar sevaks in 1992.
The bench said possession of the disputed 2.77 acre land rights would be handed over to the deity Ram Lalla, or infant Ram, who was one of the three litigants in the case.
The disputed site was occupied by the 16th century Babri mosque which was destroyed by Hindu kar sevaks on December 6, 1992, triggering nationwide communal riots that killed more than 2,000 people.
The three litigants in the case -- Ram Lalla Virajman, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Sunni Waqf Board -- had knocked on the top court’s door after a three-judge bench of the Allahabad High Court in September 2010 distributed the land equally between them. The court had ruled 2:1 in favour of Hindus.
Catch the latest news, live coverage and in-depth analyses from India and World. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
