As a deluge of Mandir-Masjid legal disputes washes over the country, and courts find themselves mulling over which land, which structure, which fragment of history belongs to which God, a Mathura court on Thursday, 19 May, held that a suit filed for removal of the Shahi Idgah Masjid was maintainable.
The Shahi Idgah Masjid has long been a contentious subject, with Hindu groups alleging that it was constructed by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in the seventeenth century after destroying part of a temple on the land where Hindu deity Krishna is believed to have been born.
And yet a compromise was arrived at in 1968 between Shree Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sangh and the management of the Shahi Masjid Idgah, which divided the disputed land and asked the two groups to stay away from each other’s sections.