Gyanvapi Row: Court Rejects Hindu Side’s Plea

Varanasi: A district court in Varanasi on Friday denied the Hindu believers’ request to carry out a “scientific inquiry” of the “Shivling” they claimed to have discovered on the grounds of the Gyanvapi mosque.

The court had deferred its decision for today after the arguments on the plea were concluded on Tuesday.

During a court-ordered videography examination of the mosque grounds, the Hindu petitioners claimed that a “Shivling” was discovered adjacent to the “wazookhana,” a tiny pond used by the Muslim devotees to perform ceremonial ablutions before offering the namaz.

The Muslim side refuted the assertion, claiming that the object was a component of a “fountain.”

The Muslim side’s attorney, Mumtaz Ahmed, claimed that they informed the court that carbon dating of the object could not be done since doing so would amount to disobeying the Supreme Court’s ruling if it were to be damaged.

The Muslim side had earlier argued that the Supreme Court had ordered the district magistrate of Varanasi to keep the item secure. It cannot be justified in such a circumstance to have it investigated, they had stressed. The Muslims also argued that the mosque’s building was unrelated to the initial dispute, which was about Shringar Gauri devotion.

The district court dismissed the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee’s objection to the civil lawsuits on September 12 of this year, ruling that Hindu organisations are not prohibited by the Places of Worship Act and that the lawsuits requesting the right to pray inside the Gyanvapi mosque are maintainable.