Gyanvapi: Varanasi Court Rejects Plea Filed By Mosque Committee Against Suit of Hindu Devotees

Varanasi district court has dismissed a plea filed by the Gyanvapi Mosque committee challenging a suit of Hindu devotees seeking permission to pray at a shrine in the mosque premises.

A petition was filed in a Varanasi court in August 2021 by five women seeking permission to worship "Goddess Maa Shringar Gauri". On April 8, the Varanasi court ordered a video survey of the Kashi Vishwanath temple-Gyanvapi mosque complex and asked for the report to be submitted by May 10.

The decades-long Gyanvapi row debate is about whether a mosque used to be a temple. Several historians have pointed out that the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb demolished a Vishweshwar temple and ordered the construction of a mosque in 1669.

In the 18th century, Queen Ahilyabai Holkar built the Kashi Vishwanath temple beside the mosque and the two places of worship even share a wall.

In October 1991 a petition, was filed in a Varanasi court arguing that the mosque was built after Aurangzeb razed a temple built almost 2000 years ago.

"Keeping the complexity and sensitivity of the matter in view, the civil suit before the civil judge in Varanasi shall be heard before a senior and experienced judicial officer of the UP judicial service," the top court had said in May when it assigned the case to the Varanasi district judge's court.