'RSS, VHP-hired experts demolished masjid'

NEW DELHI, APRIL. 19. The noted Gandhian, Ms. Nirmala Deshpande, today charged that the hired experts of RSS and VHP had demolished the disputed structure at Ayodhya.

``These people were hired by the organisers because no one was allowed to go near the structure. They had surrounded the structure. Whatever happened there was done by them,'' she told the Liberhan Commission probing the sequence of events leading to the December 6, 1992 incident.

Terming the demolition as ``pre-planned and pre- meditated'', she told the commission that ``the whole programme of bringing the karsevaks there was to demolish the masjid''. The Gandhian, who was in Ayodhya on the fateful day, said, ``No one else could penetrate. So those whom they had hired went inside on their instruction... all this was part of their gameplan. Even the pujari was asked to vacate. It was under the control of karsevaks.''

When confronted with her interview to a journalist in which she had said that those who demolished the structure were not RSS or VHP workers, she clarified, ``What I meant was that not only the RSS or VHP workers, but those who knew structural engineering did it.''

She compared the demolition of mosque to the destruction of Bamiyan Buddha statues by Taliban in Afghanistan and said it was against ``Hinduism and a blot on the nation''.

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