The Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the failure of the Mumbai police and the Maharashtra government to produce sufficient evidence against the seven men who were accused of planning to kill Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani in 2001.

All of them were freed by the trial court on August 4, 2003 for lack of evidence.

BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan told reporters in Mumbai on Friday that police had arrested the men on a tip-off from the Intelligence Bureau. They had also recorded the conversation the men purportedly had with gangster Chhota Shakeel.

Yet, they filed a first information report only four days later and did not book the men under the severe Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, which allows telephone intercepts to be admitted as evidence.

Mahajan held the government of former chief minister Vilas Deshmukh and former Mumbai police commissioner Mahesh Narayan Singh responsible for this failure.

He urged Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, Deshmukh's successor, to file an appeal against the acquittals, institute a CBI inquiry into the bungling of the case, and punish those found guilty.