The Supreme Court on Wednesday witnessed a dramatic scenes as infuriated Rajeev Dhawan, lawyer for Sunni Wakf Board and other Muslim parties in the Ayodhya title case, tore up the pictorial map provided by a Hindu party purportedly showing the exact birthplace of Lord Ram on the concluding day of the marathon hearing.
As the news of tearing of pictorial map spread like wildfire on social media, Dhavan told the court during the post-lunch session, “The incident is going viral.”
Dhavan took strong objection to senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for a faction of All India Hindu Mahasabha (AIHM), relying on the site map and books written by foreign and Indian authors to buttress claims that the central dome of the now demolished structure was the birthplace of deity “Ram Lalla”.
Dhavan said such documents (maps) cannot be relied upon in the matter now as the issue of location of “janmsthan” was discussed by the Allahabad High Court on other documents.
When he vigorously raised objections to the reliance on the pictorial map, which is also part of the book “Ayodhya Revisited” by former Bihar cadre IPS officer Kishore Kunal, Singh said he will not press the pictorial map to be taken on record. Following this, Dhawan was seen tearing the pictorial map to the utter shock of the lawyers and visitors in the packed courtroom.
Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi at this point told Dhavan, “You can shred it further, Mr Dhavan.”
After Dhawan did so, the exasperated CJI commented, “If these are the kind of arguments going on, then, we can just get up and walk out.”
The drama did not end there and during the hearing in the post lunch session, Dhavan again referred to the pre-lunch incident and said that “outside the court, it has become viral”.
“The news that has become viral is that I on my own tore the papers,” he said.
Dhavan said he had asked and sought the permission of the Bench whether those papers can be thrown and the reply from the CJI was “if it is irrelevant, you can tear it”.
“The CJI said I could shred the papers and I just followed the order," Dhavan said.