Puja in cellar: Gyanvapi mosque committee knocks on Allahabad HC’s doors after Supreme Court refuses to hear urgent plea

In the early hours of Thursday, Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi, who is the Advocate on Record for the mosque committee, moved an urgent application before the Supreme Court seeking its intervention.

In a “letter of extreme urgency” to the Supreme Court registrar, Ayyubi said, “Under the garb of the order dated 31.01.2024, the local administration, in hot haste, has deployed a massive police force on site and is in the process of cutting the grills located in the southern side of the mosque so as to create an entrance therefrom into the mosque premises to allow puja in the basement of the mosque. This action is against the letter and spirit of the orders.”

The letter added that “there is no reason for the administration to undertake this task in hot haste in the dead of the night as the order passed by the trial court had already given them one week to make the necessary arrangements. The obvious reason for such unseemly haste is that the administration in collusion with the plaintiffs is trying to foreclose any attempt by the mosque managing committee to avail of their remedies against the said order by presenting them with a fait accompli”.

The request for a hearing, the letter added, was “to ensure that mamaz and other religious observations at the mosque are not disturbed…”