NEW DELHI, 2 September 2003 — India’s Supreme Court yesterday refused to stay proceedings against Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani and others accused of involvement in the demolition of Babri Mosque in northern India, a report said.

A three-judge bench comprising justices S. Rajendra Babu, K.G. Balakrishnan and Arun Kumar, however, issued notices to Advani, Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi and federal detectives probing the controversial demolition, asking why they had sought to drop conspiracy charges in the case, the United News of India news agency said.

The court issued notices on a writ petition filed by advocate Wajahat Ansari challenging the dropping of the conspiracy charge against Advani and others.

Advocate Ansari had contended in his petition that the CBI had weakened its case against Advani and the others by dropping the conspiracy charge under section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code. He said that the conspiracy charge was included in the two cases filed in 1992 but had been dropped when the CBI’s supplementary list of charges was filed on May 30, 2003.

Advani, Joshi and other Hindu hard-liners are accused of inciting thousands of Hindu zealots to pull down the 16th century mosque in 1992.

The act sparked off nationwide Hindu-Muslims riots that left 2,000 people dead and became a key issue in the electoral campaign of the Hindu nationalist BJP party, which now heads the coalition government.

In May, detectives of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a formal petition to the court seeking to quash conspiracy charges against the deputy prime minister and other senior political figures.

Last month, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee rejected opposition charges that the CBI had been “used” to protect Advani and the others. The dispute over the site is now in the hands of the courts, which ordered experts of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to excavate the site.

A summary of a report submitted by the ASI to the court last week described a 10th-century temple with Hindu carvings under the rubble of the Babri mosque.