Lucknow, July 10: The mystery of the missing files in a 74-year-old Babri Masjid case has suddenly sprung to centre-stage, nine years after a government official died in suspicious circumstances while carrying the documents.

Late last night, the first-ever FIR was lodged into the files’ disappearance after prodding from a high court, and the state government followed it up this evening by recommending a CBI inquiry as demanded by Muslim clerics.

“The files went missing during BJP rule in Uttar Pradesh (in 2000),” chief minister Mayavati said. “A state official taking the documents to Delhi to depose before the Liberhan Commission (probing the demolition) was killed in mysterious circumstances.”

The case, filed in 1935, relates to whether the mosque stood on land grabbed from a Hindu trust and, therefore, to the mosque’s legal status.

The 23 missing documents include 60-year-old letters and a telegram from then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, expressing dismay that a Ram idol had been installed clandestinely at the mosque on the night of December 22, 1949.

Zafaryab Jilani, convener of the Babri Masjid Action Committee, claimed Nehru’s letters and telegram proved the Babri Masjid was indeed considered a mosque.

The documents were with the state home department. Nine years ago, S.B. Sadh, officer on special duty (OSD) in the home department’s counter-communalism cell, set out for Delhi by train to depose before the Liberhan panel. He was carrying these files. Sadh never reached Delhi: his body was found on the tracks.

For nine years, the state government never lodged a police case into the missing documents. When Mulayam Singh Yadav was chief minister, he started a departmental inquiry that is still going on.

Allahabad High Court last week asked the state what it had done about the missing files. Following this, the home department’s current OSD in the counter-communalism cell, A.K. Singh, registered the FIR at Hazratganj police station, Lucknow. Home secretary Mahesh Gupta said: “All the 23 missing files have been mentioned in the FIR.”

The 23 documents include correspondence between the then Faizabad deputy commissioner and the state government over the tensions created by the idol installation.

The case, originally filed in a civil court, was later shifted to the high court. The original parties were the Nirmali Akhara, which claimed the land belonged to Hindus, and the Sunni wakf board, which claimed it owned the land.

Some legal experts questioned the missing files’ relevance. They said the case was a land suit querying the legal status of the mosque, and so it hardly mattered whether the idol was illegally installed.