A court in Lucknow, India, on Wednesday acquitted all 32 people, including former deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani, of conspiring to destroy a historic mosque in 1992.

Twenty-eight years ago the Babri Masjid, a mosque in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, was razed to the ground by a vast crowd of Hindus who had gathered at the site as part of a religious procession. The mosque, in the Indian town of Ayodhya, was supposedly built on top of the birth-place of the Hindu god Rama. The procession was meant to be only a religious ceremony, but the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) maintained that the leaders of the event, Advani among them, incited the crowd to tear down the building by hand. The destruction of the mosque led to mass riots in which more than 900 people were killed.

Forty-nine people were originally charged in the case, but 17 of the accused had passed away in the meantime. The court found that the prosecution had not met its burden of proof. The court rejected newspaper clippings of the event because the original copies were not submitted into evidence. It similarly rejected photographs of the destruction, citing a lack of photographic negatives. Finally, videotape evidence was rejected because the tapes were not in sealed envelopes. The court pinned the blame on unidentified persons in the crowd instead.

This ruling follows a ruling last year that will allow Hindus to build a temple to Rama on the site, with other land nearby being given to Muslims to rebuild the mosque. In response to Wednesday’s decision, Zafaryab Jilani, a lawyer with the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said they would appeal to the high court.