'Illegal' mazar on Doon Hospital campus demolished in Dehradun

Dehradun: An illegally constructed 'mazar', which stood for decades on the campus of Government Doon Medical College and Hospital here, has been demolished, officials said on Saturday.

The city administration demolished the structure using two JCB excavators on Friday night in the presence of police after sealing the area, an official from the Kotwali police station said.

A Rishikesh resident had lodged a complaint about the existence of the mazar on the hospital campus on the CM Helpline portal, officials said.

The action followed after an examination of the documentary records related to the structure proved it was illegal, they said.

There were also complaints about the structure causing inconvenience to the movement of people visiting the hospital, which already suffers from space crunch.

Sources said the 'khadim' or caretaker of the mazar encouraged patients and their attendants coming to the hospital to offer prayers at the mazar for their recovery. The hospital administration was also troubled because of its presence on the campus, and had written to the Uttarakhand government demanding its removal, officials said.

A drive to demolish illegal mazars has been going on in the state for the past nearly two years.

Reacting to the demolition, state Congress vice-president Suryakant Dhasmana said, "While the government has the authority to take action against anything that is illegal, the manner in which the mazar was demolished overnight shows they (government) only want to spread hatred under some excuse or the other." "The government can either demolish mazars or take action against madrasas, and nothing else," he added.

The mazar had been standing inside the hospital campus from the time before Uttarakhand gained statehood in 2000.

"It was under the Waqf Board, and the board alone can say whether it was illegal," Dhasmana said.