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Varanasi district court has granted the family of a late priest the right to worship Hindu deities in the Gyanvapi mosque cellar, Hindu side counsel Madan Mohan Yadav said.
According to PTI, The order was passed by judge A K Vishvesha who directed the district magistrate to make arrangements within seven days to facilitate puja there by Shailendra Kumar Pathak, Yada said.
Advocate of the Hindu side, Sudhir Tripathi told ANI , “…Today the court has ordered that arrangements should be made and puja here (Vyas ji Ka Tekhana) should be allowed. The puja can start on any day in the next 7 days…”
The prayers will be facilitated by the Kashi Vishwanath Trust, which manages the Kashi Vishwanath temple which stands adjacent to the mosque. Hindu litigants claim the mosque was built after demolishing a part of the temple.
According to the petition filed by Pathak, his maternal grandfather, priest Somnath Vyas, used to perform prayers there till 1993 when the cellar was closed by the authorities. Pathak had sought the right to worship the deities there.
Yadav said the barricades before the Nandi statue in front of the ‘wazu khana’ — where where ablutions are performed before offering namaaz — in the mosque complex will be removed to make way for the petitioner to perform puja.
The Hindu side counsel said the puja of deities there was stopped during the rule of chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The Muslim side has argued that the cellar is part of the mosque complex, and hence permission to perform puja there should not be granted.
Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) president Alok Kumar welcomed the court’s decision, saying, “Today, a court in Kashi has given a very important decision filling the hearts of every Hindu with joy.”
Kumar congratulated the Hindu society over the court’s decision and said, “We hope that after this, the court’s verdict on the Gyanvapi case will also come soon. We are confident that the decision will come in favour of Hindus based on evidence and facts.”
On Gyanvapi case, Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Chief Priest Acharya Satyendra Das told ANI , “An order has been given that prayers were performed there and that should continue… It is good that the right to perform the ‘Puja’ has been given… The truth has come out… Those who stopped the Puja and the way in which it was stopped, were wrong… I thank the court for giving the right to perform Puja. It is a matter of joy… Halting the Puja was wrong, but now the wrong has been rectified…”
