The Muslim side filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the Gyanvapi verdict given by the Allahabad High Court. The High Court had, earlier in the day, dismissed the Gyanvapi mosque management committee’s twin appeals.The appeals were, in turn, directed against a Varanasi district court’s decision to permit puja in a cellar in the mosque complex. On January 17, the Varanasi district judge had appointed the district magistrate as the receiver of the southern cellar of the mosque. On January 31, the Varanasi district court ruled that a priest can perform prayers before the idols in the southern cellar of the mosque. Justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal, while dismissing both the appeals of the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid (AIM), said in his order: “After going through the entire records of the case and after considering arguments of the parties concerned, the court did not find any ground to interfere in the judgement passed by the Varanasi district judge.” The AIM had filed the appeal in the high court on February 1 soon after the Supreme Court had refused to hear the mosque committee’s plea against the order allowing the puja in the southern cellar.Varanasi district judge Dr AK Vishwesha had allowed the puja in the southern cellar on the plea of Shailendra Kumar Pathak ‘Vyas’, a member of the Vyas family which had the cellar in its possession and had been conducting the puja inside it until 1993. He had said the “puja” was stopped during the tenure of then Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav after the Babri masjid in Ayodhya was demolished on December 6, 1992.The AIM had challenged the stand of the Vyas family and claimed that the southern cellar being on mosque premises was in its possession and that nether the Vyas family nor anyone else had the right to perform puja inside it. It had also said that no idols existed in the cellar and hence, there was no question of prayers being offered there till 1993. The petitioner had claimed that his family had the control of the cellar even during the British rule.A survey conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) on the court’s order had suggested that the mosque was constructed during Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s rule over the remains of a Hindu temple.
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