The Allahabad high court on Monday asked the Hindu and Muslim petitioners to approach the trial court in connection with the dispute over the Krishna Janmabhoomi temple in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.
The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board and the Shahi Masjid Idgah management committee had moved the high court for the adjudication of the matter, saying it had wider implications.
Disposing of the petitions, Justice Prakash Padia said: “All the parties are free to raise all their contentions before the trial court.”
He added: “Any observations by this court will prejudice the rights and contentions of both the parties. The suit has now been registered as suit no. 353 of 2022. Summons have already been issued by the trial court on 26.05.2022 for filing the respective written statements and framing of issues.”
“In light of the above, both the petitions are disposed of by remanding the matter back to the trial court with directions to adjudicate the Civil Suit no. 353 of 2022 after following due procedure as per law…,” he said.
The plea was originally filed in 2020 by Lucknow-based lawyer, Ranjana Agnihotri, and six others as the “next friend” of Bhagwan Sri Krishna Virajman, the presiding deity at the Mathura temple. Next friend is a legal representative of someone incapable of maintaining a suit directly.
{{/usCountry}}The plea was originally filed in 2020 by Lucknow-based lawyer, Ranjana Agnihotri, and six others as the “next friend” of Bhagwan Sri Krishna Virajman, the presiding deity at the Mathura temple. Next friend is a legal representative of someone incapable of maintaining a suit directly.
{{/usCountry}}The suit claimed that Shahi Eidgah Masjid was constructed on a part of 13.37-acre land belonging to the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi Trust. They demanded the mosque, which abuts the temple, be removed and the land returned to the trust.
In September that year, Mathura’s civil judge (senior division) rejected the suit as non-admissible and said it violated the provisions of the 1991 Places of Worship Act, which locked the character of places of worship as they existed on the day of India’s Independence, with the exception of the Ayodhya dispute.
The Hindu petitioners then moved the district court, which in May 2022 reversed the lower court’s order, but also passed certain observations on the merits of the case, including its maintainability and whether the 1991 law was relevant.
The UP Sunni Central Waqf Board and the Shahi Eidgah Trust – which manages the Mathura mosque – challenged the district court’s order before the high court.
On Monday, in a 10-page order, justice Padia disposed of all petitions and found certain problems with the orders of both the lower court and the district court.
“A perusal of the record shows that the civil suit which was duly instituted by the plaintiffs was wrongly registered as a miscellaneous case by the civil judge… The trial court treated the plaint as a misc. case and decided a question of maintainability of the suit which is not permissible in law,” the high court held.
At the same time, the high court disagreed with the district court as well.
“The district judge framed many points on the basis of the arguments raised on behalf of the defendants, as recorded in the impugned judgment. These questions were not needed to be decided as the defendant had right to file its written statement, deny the facts and law therein, and the court under Order 14 Rule 1 CPC was then to frame issues and after issues were framed, parties are entitled to lead evidence…Entire procedure laid down in law has been by-passed and findings on the merits of the case have been given which is not permissible in law,” the high court held.
The court therefore asked all parties to raise their contentions before the trial court, saying that the matter was remanded back to the trial court.
“This court is conscious that the questions regarding the maintainability of a regular civil suit and its merits, which could not have been decided by the trial court without following the due procedure as per the code, and further the contentious questions were not required to be decided by the district judge in a revision petition,” the high court said.
The developments reignite a decades-old religious legal fight over the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi-Shahi Eidgah mosque complex in Mathura, at a time when a similar legal fight is roiling Varanasi in the Kashi Vishwanath Temple-Gyanvapi Masjid case. In both cases, Hindu groups argue that temples were demolished by Islamic rulers to build mosques, and therefore, the land should be returned to Hindus. Muslim groups reject the contention.
The religious dispute simmered in the first half of the 20th century but a 1968 agreement calmed tempers. On October 12, 1968, an agreement was signed between the Shri Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sansthan and the Shahi Masjid Idgah Trust, which divided the land between the two parties and relinquished any claims of the Hindu parties to the land of the mosque.
But Agnihotri’s petition challenged the settlement and alleged that the pact had no legal validity because the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi Trust, which the petitioners claimed had the ownership and title of the land, was not party to the settlement.