India court allows centuries-old Shahi Eidgah mosque to be scanned for Hindu relics amid row with Muslims

An Indian court has granted permission to survey a centuries-old mosque to determine if it contains Hindu relics and symbols, a lawyer said on Thursday, in a boost to Hindu groups which claim it was built on a site of a destroyed Hindu temple.

On Thursday, the Allahabad high court permitted a survey of the 17th century mosque, where Muslims still pray, to determine if there are any relics or Hindu symbols inside the complex.

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“My demand was that in Shahi Eidgah Masjid there are a lot of signs and symbols of the Hindu temple,” Vishnu Jain, a lawyer for the Hindu side, told reporters after the verdict.

Last year, Hindu groups petitioned to keep Muslims from praying in the mosque, saying they suspected that Hindu relics inside could be removed.

“The truth will come out now, was it a mosque or a temple,” Vinod Bansal, a spokesperson for hardline Hindu organisation, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), told CNN News18 TV channel.

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Members of hardline Hindu groups linked to Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) believe that Islamic invaders and rulers destroyed Hindu temples over several centuries.

They want to reclaim and restore some of the most revered temples, including in Mathura and Varanasi – a polarising dispute that pits them against India’s 200 million minority Muslims.

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A similar dispute in Ayodhya led to Hindu mobs razing the Babri mosque in 1992, following claims it was built atop a temple dedicated to Lord Ram at his birthplace.

That site was handed over to Hindu groups by the Supreme Court in 2019 and Modi is due to inaugurate a grand Ram temple there next month.

There was no immediate response from Muslim groups to Thursday’s court order.

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Asaduddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim lawmaker, said the Mathura dispute had been settled decades ago but a new group had been raking it up.