Replace biased official, say Gyanvapi mosque caretakers

Mosque committee moves court. 

The caretakers of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi on Saturday submitted an application in a local court demanding that the court-appointed advocate commissioner asked to videograph a ‘Hindu site’ located behind the western wall of the mosque be replaced as he was acting in a “biased” manner.

Since the mosque committee objected to the inspection of the area inside the barricade of the mosque, the inspection process was halted on the second day, lawyers of the Hindu plaintiffs said.

This came a day after a team of lawyers and opposing legal parties led by court-appointed advocate commissioner Ajay Kumar Mishra initiated a videographic inspection of the Maa Shringar Gauri site located at the back of the western wall of the Gyanvapi mosque in the Gyanvapi Masjid-Kashi Vishwanath temple complex.

In an application submitted in the court of the civil judge, senior division, Varanasi, the mosque’s caretakers alleged that Mr. Mishra was acting in a “biased manner” and appeared hell-bent on the inspection and videography of those areas in the premises already objected to in writing by them to him on May 6 before the process began. The court commissioner was acting under pressure of the Hindu plaintiffs, the caretakers of Gyanvapi mosque said.

“He is working more like a party on the side of the plaintiffs,” Rayeed Ahmad, one of the lawyers of the mosque committee, told journalists.

Civil judge, senior division, Ravi Kumar Diwakar had appointed the court commissioner after five women plaintiffs filed a suit in April 2021 declaring that they were entitled to have daily darshan, pooja and perform all the rituals of Maa Shringar Gauri, Lord Ganesh, Lord Hanuman and other “visible and invisible deities within old temple complex” situated at settlement Plot no. 9130 in the area of ward and police station Dashwamedh.

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