Michael Corey Golden was sentenced to 14 years and three months in prison after pleading guilty to having vandalised and burned down a mosque in the state of Tennessee, in USA, in February 2008.

The Attorney General for civil rights has said, "The right to worship without fear of this kind of violent interference is among our most fundamental civil rights and we will aggressively prosecute anyone who seeks to intimidate or injure any congregation because of what they believe, how they worship or who they are."

This is in USA and in India, a group of Hindu nationalist alleged to have been led by former prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee and current leader of the opposition Lal Krishna Advani tore down a 16 century mosque in Ayodhya, in 1992 but yet they are walking free without being prosecuted.

After 17 long years, the probe result has just leaked and the parliament is disrupted by those who were responsible for this crime. It is worth mentioning that when this incident took place, the Congress under Narasimman Rao's premiership was in power. Well over 2,000 innocent people died in the riot which followed that criminal act.

The person who committed a similar crime in the US was tried and punished in just one year but the Ayodhya criminals yet to be tried after 17 years.

Even if they were to be prosecuted now, we wonder, how many of them would still be living to hear the verdict from an Indian court.

This letter is not to point out the communalism preached by a small minority of extremists, which is prevalent in every country but the delayed justice.

We learn that this is the case with all the SAARC countries and most of the Asian countries, too.