Supreme Court to hear petition today against Sambhal mosque survey

The plea said that the mosque had been in existence since the 16th century and has been in continuous use by Muslims as a place of worship but the matter was rushed through in “hot haste” after a suit was filed by eight plaintiffs who alleged that it was built after destroying the “Shri Hari Har Temple”.

The suit was presented on November 19 and, on the same day, the trial court, in an ex-parte order, allowed the request for appointing an Advocate Commissioner for survey of the mosque, the plea said.

It added that the order gave no reasons as to why the application was being considered ex parte and why was it allowed. The court also gave no reasons nor any terms of reference for the survey, it pointed out.

Policemen on guard near Shahi Jama Masjid in UP’s Sambhal following the clashes. (Express photo by Gajendra Yadav)

The mosque management said that within two hours of the order, the Advocate Commissioner, along with the plaintiffs’ advocates and police force, arrived at the mosque to conduct the survey which started at 6 pm and continued until 8.30 pm.

The team arrived for a second survey on the morning of November 24 and asked worshippers, who were present in the mosque for dawn prayers, to leave the premises, it said.

The plea added: “The hot haste in which the matter proceeded and a subsequent survey was suddenly conducted, gave rise to apprehensions in the mind of the residents of the area, which brought them outside their house.”

That day, four people died of gunshot wounds metres away from the mosque after violence that broke out after the survey team showed up at the mosque. Police, however, claimed the bullets were not fired by them. “We used only non-lethal weapons when the crowd resorted to stone pelting. Our own men have suffered injuries,” said Sambhal SP Krishna Kumar Bishnoi. Bishnoi said a fifth person, too, died on Sunday, but he likely suffered a heart attack.

The masjid committee’s plea said that “the hot haste in which the survey was allowed and conducted all within a day and suddenly another survey was conducted with a notice of barely six hours, has given rise to widespread communal tensions and threatens the secular and democratic fabric of the nation”.

A bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar is likely to hear on Friday the Special Leave Petition which, among others, seeks ex-parte ad-interim stay on the operation of the November 19 trial court order.

The plea also urged the SC to direct that the report of the Survey Commissioner be kept in a sealed cover and status quo be maintained until finality of the appeal.

It asked the court to issue directions to the effect that surveys should not be ordered and executed as a matter of course in cases involving disputes over places of worship without hearing all parties and allowing sufficient time to the aggrieved persons to seek judicial remedies against the order of survey.

On January 16 this year, a bench, presided by Justice Khanna, had stayed the December 14, 2023, Allahabad High Court allowing a court-monitored survey of the Shahi Idgah Mosque complex adjoining the Krishna Janmabhoomi Temple in Mathura.

The SC is currently seized of petitions relating to the disputes over the mosques in the Gyanvapi complex in Varanasi and the Sri Krishna Janmasthan in Mathura. The court is also seized of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Places of Worship Act, 1991, which bars the conversion of the religious character of a place of worship as it stood on August 15, 1947.