A Mathura court has allowed the lawsuit demanding the removal of the Mughal-era Shahi Idgah mosque near the birthplace of Lord Krishna
According to the petition, the Shahi Idgah mosque was built at the Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura on the orders of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1669-70.
A district court in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura has allowed a plea demanding the removal of a mosque said to be built on the birthplace of Lord Krishna, the Krishna Janmabhoomi. The lawsuit can now be heard in court.
What is the case?
The Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi Trust and other private parties are seeking ownership of the land on which the Shahi Idgah Mosque is built. The masjid is next to the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi Sthal, where the deity – Lord Krishna – is believed to have been born.
The lawsuit involves the ownership of 13.37 acres of land which, according to the plea, belongs to Lord Shri Krishna Virajman, the Hindu god.
According to the petitions, the Shahi Idgah Mosque was built on the premises of the Katra Keshav Dev Temple near the birthplace of Lord Krishna following the orders of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1669-70. They demand that the mosque should be shifted.
The petitioners have also sought excavation of the disputed site under the supervision of the court, saying that an inquiry report of the excavation should be submitted.
Who are the petitioners in the case?
Last year, Advocate Ranjana Agnihotri along with six others had first filed a claim in the case in the court of a civil judge.
Agnihotri, a resident of Lucknow filed the lawsuit, as the “next friend of the infant Lord Krishna” of the Katra Keshav Dev temple.
The civil judge dismissed the plea, holding that it was not maintainable since none of the petitioners was from Mathura who could have a valid stake in the issue. Various organisations including the Akhil Bharatiya Tirth Purohit Mahasabha, Mathur Chaturvedi Parishad and Hindu Mahasabha wanted to become a party in the case filed for the removal of Shahi Idgah Mosque.
The court had also said that the case cannot be admitted under the Places of Worship Act of 1991, which maintains the religious status of any place of worship as it was on 15 August 1947, reports NDTV.
The decision was challenged before the district court where the Trust and the temple management authority were made parties to the suit.
“As worshippers of Lord Krishna, we have the right to file a suit demanding restoration of his property. The mosque was wrongly built on Krishna Janmabhoomi. There was a compromise several years ago on the sharing of property, but that compromise was illegal,” said Gopal Khandelwal, a lawyer for the petitioner, reports NDTV, referring to the 1968 agreement.
What is the 1968 agreement?
The ownership of the 13.37 acres of land on which the shrine and idgah are located has been a matter of dispute for over eight decades. In 1935, the Allahabad High Court upheld the ownership rights of the king of Varanasi over the land on which the mosque was in 1669 next to the ruins of the temple, believed the birthplace of Lord Krishna.
In 1951, industrialist Yugal Kishor Birla, who had bought the land in 1944, launched the Sri Krishnabhoomi Trust to construct a temple at the birthplace of the deity. The Shri Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sangh was formed in 1958 and it started performing all the roles assigned to the trust.
The body filed a civil case in 1964 but four years later made a settlement with the Muslim side.
The 1968 a “compromise agreement” was signed between Shri Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sansthan, the temple management authority which is a registered society under law, and the Trust Masjid Idgah in which the temple authority conceded the contentious portion of land to the Idgah, reports The Indian Express.
The Sansthan and the Idgah committee reached an agreement granting ownership of the land to the temple trust even as the management rights of the masjid were left to the Idgah committee.
The agreement deprived the trust of the legal right to stake a claim on the masjid.
What happens now?
In a ruling on Thursday, the District and Sessions judge Rajiv Bharti had allowed the plea. This means that the case will now be heard by a lower court in Mathura. Apart from looking into the revenue records, the court will have to also decide the validity of the 1968 agreement, reports The Indian Express.
With inputs from agencies
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