On 19 February, Nritya Gopal Das and Champat Rai Bansal, the two Babri Masjid demolition accused, have been appointed as the President and General Secretary of the Ram Mandir Trust, respectively. Further, the former Principal Secretary of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nripendra Mishra, will be acting as the chairman of the temple construction committee. The first meeting of the trust was held at the residence of Trust Head and Senior Lawyer K Parasaran in Delhi.
On 5 February, following the orders of Supreme Court, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in the parliament, for the formation of 15-member trust for the construction of Ram temple. Subsequently, Nritya Gopal Das, the chief of Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, appointed as the President, will head the trust that will be in charge of building a Ram temple in Ayodhya while the vice president of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Champat Rai Bansal will be the General Secretary of the Ram Mandir Trust.
On 9 November 2019, the Supreme Court of India ordered the disputed land (2.77 acres) in Ayodhya, to be handed over to a trust to build the Ram Janmabhoomi temple. The court also ordered the government to give an alternate 5 acres of land in another place to the Sunni Waqf Board, for the purpose of building a mosque.
As per sources, in December 1992, both Das and Bansal were on the dais, from where several leaders had addressed ‘kar sevaks’ before the Babri mosque was demolished. Subsequently, in September 1997, a special court charged both Das and Rai under Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 153-A (promoting enmity on various grounds), 153-B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class), 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code.
However, on 4 May 2001, proceedings against 21 persons, including Das and Bansal, were dropped citing that there were two sets of accused – one, the ‘kar sewaks’ who demolished the mosque, and the others who were the alleged instigators.
