Now, suit filed in Mathura court to reclaim Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi land

Nearly two months after the groundbreaking ceremony of the Ayodhya Ram Temple, a civil suit was filed in a Mathura court on Saturday claiming ownership of the entire land on which the Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi temple and the Shahi Idgah Mosque are situated.

The civil suit was filed by 'Bhagwan Shrikrishna Virajman' to claim the entire birthplace of Lord Krishna and remove encroachment and 'illegal' superstructure built in the form of the Shahi Idgah Mosque.

The plaint, filed on behalf of the Deity, considered minor, and eight followers of the Vedic Sanatan Dharam, sought complete control of the 13.73-acre land in Mathura with the temple complex area at Katra Keshav Dev.

The UP Sunni Central Waqf Board, Committee of Management Trust of Idgah Masjid, Shri Krishna Jamnabhoomi Trust and Shri Krishna Janmasthan Sewa Sansthan are the defendants in the suit.

The plaintiffs claimed that the Shri Krishna Janmasthan Sewa Sansthan worked against the interest of the Deity and the devotees and had fraudulently entered into a compromise with the Committee of Management Trust Masjid Idgah on October 12, 1968, conceding a considerable portion of the property to the trust. They sought to exercise their right to worship under Article 25 and manage the temple under Article 26 of the Constitution.

Bhagwan Shrikrishna Virajman, represented by next friend Ranjana Agnihotri and the devotees, including advocate Karunesh Kumar Shukla through their advocates Hari Shankar Jain and Vishnu Shankar Jain, claimed that the army of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who ruled over the region between 1658 and 1707, partly succeeded in the demolition of the Keshav Dev temple and a construction was raised as Idgah masjid. They quoted late historian Jadunath Sarkar who had written about the Keshav Dev temple being razed to the ground in 1670 and a mosque being built there.

The All India Akhara Parishad (AIAP), an apex body of the seers in the country, had made it clear that the fight for the Ram Temple had ended and now it was the turn of Kashi and Mathura.

''We have got Ram Temple.....now we will liberate the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi and Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura,'' AIAP President Mahant Narendra Giri had then said.

''Kashi and Mathura are also blots for the Hindus....they must also be freed,'' he had said, appealing to the seers and saints to launch a ''peaceful movement'' to 'free' Kashi and Mathura.

The AIAP had recently held a meeting at Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad) and discussed the strategy to launch a mass movement to 'liberate' the twin temples at Kashi and Mathura.

At the brick-laying ceremony for the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on August 5, the chief priest, who had performed the rituals in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, wanted 'liberation' of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi and the Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi temple in Mathura in 'dakshina' (a gift in cash or kind or promise given to the priests by the person for whom he performs the puja) from Modi.

Though priest Gangadhar Pathak wanted to ask the prime minister to 'liberate' Kashi and Mathura, he had then been stopped by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra trust, which will be overseeing the construction of the Ram temple.

Although both, the BJP and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), have said that Kashi and Mathura are not on their agenda, according to sources, the seers affiliated with the VHP were elated by the civil suit filed in Mathura and have vowed their support for the same.

The filing of this case comes at a time when a petition by an organisation of Hindu priests challenging the validity of a 1991 law which prohibits the filing of a suit to reclaim a place of worship or seek a change in its character from what prevailed on August 15, 1947 is pending before the Supreme Court.

Notably, the Ayodhya dispute was excluded from the ambit of this 1991 law due to the pendency of the dispute before the cut-off date of August 15, 1947.

The top court's five-judge bench had on November 9, 2019, unanimously ruled in the favour of Hindus by allowing the building of a Ram temple at Ayodhya, recognising it as the birth place of Lord Ram. It had then said that the 1991 law was a legislative intervention that preserved non-retrogression as an essential feature of our secular values. It had also pointed out courts cannot correct historical wrongs.