UP mosque survey violence: Three dead; mob torches vehicles, pelt stones

According to the sources, two youths were killed after being hit by bullets during violence. It was however not clear if they were hit in the police firing.

Lucknow: Three persons were killed and several others, including cops, were injured in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal town, on Sunday. A mob pelted stones and torched vehicles prompting the police to fire tear gas shells during a court-ordered survey of a famous mosque.

The survey was ordered after some Hindu plaintiffs claimed that the mosque was originally a Hindu temple, known as the Harihar Temple, allegedly demolished and converted into a mosque by Mughal Emperor Babur in 1529.

According to the sources, three youths, identified as Naeem, Bilal and Naimul, were killed after being shot. It was, however, not clear if they were killed because of the police firing. Commissioner, Moradabad division, Anjeneya Kumar Singh, has confirmed all three deaths.

According to the superintendent of police Krishna Kumar Bishnoi, thousands of people assembled before the Jama Masjid in Sambhal when the court appointed advocate commissioner reached to conduct the survey on Sunday morning and raised slogans against the survey.

Sources said that the mob demanded that the survey be stopped and indulged in heavy stone pelting in which around two dozen people, including cops, were injured. Senior officials, who were present on the spot, tried to persuade the protesters to disperse and warned of strict action but they did not heed the advice.

As the mob torched several vehicles near the mosque, the police fired tear gas shells and fired in the air to disperse the protesters. Sources said that around ten vehicles were torched by the mob.

Bishnoi said that the mob also targeted police vehicles. He said that the trouble mongers would be identified through CCTV footage and action would be taken against them.

Videos which went viral on social media purportedly showed burning vehicles and stones on the roads in the lanes near the mosque. The survey team, which spent around two hours inside the mosque, was escorted out by the police, sources said.

Police try to control the situation amid violence during a second survey of the Jama Masjid, claimed to be originally the site of an ancient Hindu temple, in Sambhal, Sunday, Nov. 24

Around a dozen people were detained in connection with the violence, police officials said in Sambhal. A senior police official here said that NSA would be slapped on the trouble mongers.

The entire area had been barricaded and security personnel in strength had been deployed to maintain law and order. The situation was stated to be ‘’under control’’.

The survey report would be submitted in the court on November 29.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Commission had conducted videography of different parts of the Jama Masjid for around two hours during which the members of the Muslim community gathered in large numbers outside the Mosque and raised slogans against the Survey.

A district had on Monday appointed a Court Commission for the survey of the mosque after Hindu plaintiffs filed an application claiming that it had been constructed after demolishing a temple.

Hindu seer Rishiraj Giri and others had filed an application in the court of civil judge Aditya Kumar Singh claiming that the Jama Masjid was in fact Harihar Temple and that the mosque had been constructed after demolishing the temple.

Vishnu Shankar Jain, the lawyer for the Hindu applicants, claimed that Mughal emperor Babur had demolished the Harihar Temple in the 16th century and got a mosque constructed there.

Zafar Ali, a member of the Jama Masjid Committee, rejected the contention and said that there was no basis to claim that the mosque had been constructed after demolishing a Temple.

As per local mythology, the ‘Kalki Avtar’ (the purported 'final' incarnation of Vishnu at the end of the 'Kali Yuga') is connected to the "Harihar Temple".