SHIMLA: Police used water cannons on Friday to disperse protestors demanding the demolition of a portion of a mosque built on encroached government land in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi town.The mosque management committee have been served a notice by the Mandi municipal corporation to remove the encroachment within 30 days.According to the notice, the mosque stands on 232 square metres of land while the approval granted was just for 45 square metres.Raising slogans of “Jai Shi Ram”, the protesters initially held a march in the Mandi market area and sat on a dharna at Seri manch.Later, when they made attempts to proceed towards the mosque, police stopped them and used water cannons to bring the situation under control.Security had been beefed up by the police in Mandi with the deployment of heavy force after Hindu outfits gave the call for the protest march.On Thursday, members of the Muslim community had demolished an unauthorised portion of the mosque themselves.The unauthorised construction was on a plot of land which belongs to the public works department.The department and the municipal corporation had earlier served notices on the mosque management committee in this connection.”PWD officials had informed us that a wall of the mosque was in PWD land and we were served a notice. So we decided to demolish the wall,” Iqbal Ali, a member of the mosque committee, said earlier.
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