A day after conceding that the Ram Chabutra located on outer yard of the disputed site in Ayodhya was the birthplace of Ram, the Sunni Central Wakf Board on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that it had not made any such acceptance, but merely said it had not questioned a Faizabad court’s 1886 finding that Hindus worshipped the Chabutra under the belief that it was Ram’s birthplace. “What I said was not our acceptance.. Since the Faizabad judge said so, we have not taken any steps for eviction,” senior advocate Zafaryab Jilani, appearing for the Sunni Board, told a five-judge Constitution bench headed by CJI Ranjan Gogoi hearing the Ayodhya dispute case. The bench also comprises Justices S A Bobde, D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan, and S Abdul Nazeer. Arguing the case for the mosque side later, senior advocate Meenakshi Arora also said, “Mr Jilani said something accidentally (on Tuesday) and it got registered everywhere.” On Wednesday, Arora tried to question contents of the Archeological Survey of India’s (ASI) report — the ASI had excavated the disputed site on Allahabad High Court’s orders. The bench said the mosque side should have questioned this during the trial, and not now during appeal. Referring to relevant provisions in Civil Procedure Code, which says any party to a suit may urge the trial court to summon the commissioner (author of the report) and examine them, Justice Chandrachud asked why this was not done. “You should have sorted this out in trial court. You should have called for the witness.. This is not the place for it,” Justice Bobde said. Arora replied that objections were filed before the HC, which was hearing the Ayodhya case trial at the time, and the court had said it will consider them at a later stage but did not do so. “You had to do it in the process known to law,” Justice Nazeer pointed out. CJI Gogoi asked, “Why should we hear you?.. None of your objections, however strong, can be entertained by us when you have not raised these objections in trial.” Justice Bobbe added, “The reason we say so is because the expert may have had an answer.” The bench asked Arora to consider this aspect and reply when she resumes her arguments on Thursday. Arora said chapter 10 of the report — the “Summary” — was not attributed to any archeologist even as the other nine chapters were. So, she submitted, it could not have been accepted as evidence. To this, the bench said the report was submitted as a whole by archeologists Hari Manjhi and B R Hari. Later, after inquiries, the CJI said it was submitted along with a miscellaneous application, requesting the court to take it on record and the HC had passed an order in it. Arora also disputed the ASI findings on pillar bases and other evidence recovered after digging the site, which the court again said should have been put to the experts during trial. The senior counsel said archeology is a social science, and not a natural science, and the ASI report does not provide any verifiable conclusion. It is thus only an opinion of the archeologists, and being an opinion is very weak evidence, she submitted.
