The Supreme Court will resume the hearing in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi case on Thursday.

A special bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer has taken up 13 appeals filed against the Allahabad High Court’s 2010 judgment that ruled a three-way split of the disputed 2.77 acres in Ayodhya. The disputed plot has been divided among the Sunni Waqf Board, a Hindu organisation called the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla or Infant Rama, which is represented by the Hindu Mahasabha for the construction of the Ram temple.

On December 5, 2017, the court had rejected senior advocate Kapil Sibal’s request to push the hearing to July 2019 when the next Lok Sabha elections are over. Sibal also asked that a seven-judge Constitution bench of the top court hear the case, which too was turned down.

On December 6, 1992, the mosque was demolished by lakhs of karsevaks who had gathered at the site from across the country. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country. The karsevaks had claimed that the land on which the mosque stood was the birthplace of Ram.

The movement to demolish the mosque was led by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. BJP leader LK Advani piloted one of many roadshows across India in 1990 to galvanise support to have a temple built at the site of the mosque.

In May 2017, a special Central Bureau of Investigation court granted bail to LK Advani and other BJP leaders like Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case..

Here is a round-up of pieces published on Scroll.in on the dispute:

  • The Supreme Court should not deliver its judgement on Ayodhya before the 2019 election: It would be neither fair nor wise as the United States learned the hard way in the 19th century.  
  • How Rama appeared inside the Babri Masjid: On December 23, 1949,the Ayodhya Police filed an FIR following the planting of the idol of Lord Rama in Babri Masjid the night before. It named Abhiram Das as the prime accused. The secret story of what happened.
  • ‘There are now only eighteen days left...’: Five weeks before the Babri Masjid is demolished, Delhi wakes up to tantalising pamphlets on the walls, claiming to reveal India’s suppressed past, its ‘Secret History’. True or fictional? Who writes them? A dying man tries to find out. An excerpt from the novel, ‘The Hour Before Dawn’.  
  • The backlash on the day after: In her controversial novel ‘Lajja’ (Shame), Taslima Nasrin recounts the hostile response in Bangladesh to the demolition of the mosque.  
  • 25 years on, Supreme Court order shows how justice in the Babri case has been denied: Mass crimes conducted in the name of religion in India almost never result in convictions.     
  • Babri Masjid litigant Hashim Ansari, 95, never lost his faith in the courts: The tailor from Ayodhya was one of the last people with personal knowledge of how the mosque was turned into a temple in 1949.