A civil suit has been filed on behalf of the Hindu deity Shri Krishna Virajman, seeking the removal of the Shahi Idgah Masjid adjacent to the Shri Krishna temple complex and seeking to reclaim ownership over the entire 13.37 acres of “Krishna Janmabhumi” land, Bar & Bench reported. The suit has been filed in a court in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh.
The suit has been filed by a person called Ranjana Agnihotri, a resident of Lucknow. According to The Quint, he calls himself the ‘next friend’ of Krishna, as well as six other devotees of the deity.
The respondents of the suit are UP Sunni Central Waqf Board and Committee of Management Trust of Shahi Masjid Idgah.
Previously, a civil judge in Mathura had passed a judgement on a suit regarding the alleged compromise between the Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sansthan and the trust, on July 20, 1973. The judgement prohibited any alterations to the structures. The present suit has asked for this judgement to be cancelled.
However, the 1991 Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act protects all religious structures as they existed at the time of Independence with the exception of the disputed site at Ayodhya. Therefore, a mosque cannot be turned into a temple or vice versa.
According to Scroll, a Hindutva group has already filed a plea in court through Vishnu Shankar Jain challenging the 1991 law, as it prohibits Hindu “deities” from reclaiming the land on which temples existed before their alleged demolition by Muslim rulers.
The suit also claims that the Shri Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sansthan, which is the governing body of the temple complex, entered into an illegal agreement with the Shahi Idgah trust with the intention of land-grabbing. “The Shree Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sansthan is working against the interest of the deity and devotees and fraudulently entered into a compromise with the Committee of Management of Trust Masjid Idgah in 1968 conceding a considerable portion of property belonging to the deity and the trust,” the suit said.
In a verdict on November 9 last year, the Supreme Court had ruled that the disputed land in Ayodhya, where the Babri Masjid once stood, would be handed over to a government-run trust for the construction of a Ram temple. The court said that the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 by Hindu mobs, that subsequently resulted in the death of thousands was “an egregious violation of the rule of law”.
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Rushda Fathima Khan is the Staff Reporter for The Cognate.
