Police provide protection to Hindus after a local court allowed them to enter the Gianvapi Mosque to perform their rituals there (French)
Indian authorities demolished a centuries-old historic mosque in the capital, New Delhi, without prior notice, as part of what they say is a demolition operation to remove “illegal” buildings from the forest reserve.
The mosque was demolished Tuesday in a forest in Mehrauli, an affluent neighborhood dotted with centuries-old ruins of settlements that predated modern Delhi.
Those in charge of the Akhunji Mosque say that it is about 600 years old, and 22 students enrolled in an Islamic boarding school used to live there.
A member of the mosque's management committee, Muhammad Dhafar, told Agence France-Presse that the mosque did not receive any prior notice before the demolition was carried out "in the dark of the night."
Dhofar added that many graves in the mosque complex were also desecrated, and no one was allowed to remove copies of the Qur’an or other materials from inside the mosque before it was demolished.
He said that currently there is no trace of the graves in which many “our revered figures and ancestors are buried” and the ruins of the mosque and graves have been removed and dumped elsewhere.
The demolition comes at a sensitive time in India, with Hindu nationalist activists growing more emboldened in their long campaign to replace several prominent mosques with new Hindu temples.
The Delhi Development Authority, the city's main land management agency responsible for carrying out the demolitions, did not respond to the agency's requests for comment.
The demolition of the Akhwanji Mosque comes less than a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched dedicated transportation lines for visitors to a new Hindu temple built on the site of a former mosque that witnessed sectarian violence.
The new Ayodhya temple dedicated to the Hindu god Ram is expected to be officially inaugurated next month on the site of the Babri Mosque, which was demolished by Hindu extremists more than 30 years ago.
Hindu groups have demanded control of the disputed Gyanvapi Mosque in the Indian city of Varanasi, sacred to Hindus, which they say was built over a Hindu temple during the Islamic Mughal Empire centuries ago.
On Thursday, Hindu activists entered the Gyanvapi Mosque under police protection to perform their worship there after a local court allowed them to do so.
Since Modi took office in 2014, India has witnessed numerous outbreaks of violence between the Hindu majority and the 200 million Muslim minority, which the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is accused of seeking to marginalize.
Source: French