Justice Liberhan denies leaking report

An angry M S Liberhan denied on Monday that he had leaked the Babri Masjid demolition report to the media saying he was not a "characterless" person to do so and yelled at probing newsmen to "get lost".

Visibly upset over the "leakage" of his report triggering a furore in Parliament, the former high court judge took exception to a journalist asking him if he had perhaps leaked the report to an English daily. "I will not speak on the report. If the report is with the media, then go and find out from where the media got it and who provided the report," an agitated Liberhan told reporters at his residence in Chandigarh.

When it was pointed out that the opposition had been alleging that the report was "selectively leaked" and asked whether it was leaked from "his side", Liberhan said, "let the opposition say anything, but what do you mean by this? "Don't challenge my character...get lost," a perturbed Liberhan, who lost his cool, said.

"I am not a person who is accessible to you (media)...I don't want to talk about it," he said. "I am not that characterless a person that I will hand over the report to the media before being placed in Parliament," said Liberhan, whose probe into the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was one of the country's longest running inquiry commissions. It took 17 years and 48 extensions for the Liberhan Commission to submit its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in June this year. Home minister P Chidambaran told Lok Sabha earlier in the day that there was only one copy of the Liberhan Commission report and that was "in safe custody".