Plea filed for ASI survey of Gyanvapi complex’s other closed basements

Varanasi, February 5

Days after the district court ruled that a priest can perform prayers in a cellar of the Gyanvapi mosque, a petitioner today filed a plea seeking an ASI survey of all other closed basements in the complex.

Temple’s sticker pasted on Mosque signboard

Roshan Pandey, UP secretary of the Hindu Samaj Party, has been booked for inciting religious sentiments for pasting the sticker of a temple instead of a mosque on the Gyanvapi Mosque signboard

The Varanasi district court will hear the petition on Tuesday. The petitioner, Rakhi Singh, is a founding member of the Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh and is one of the parties in the Maa Shringar Gauri case, which led to the survey of the complex by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

In the petition, she asked for all closed cellars in the Gyanvapi mosque complex, adjacent to the Kashi Vishwanath temple, to be surveyed by the ASI, her advocate Anupam Dwivedi said. He said a map of the closed basements had also been included in the petition.

The petition said there were “secret cellars” inside the basements, and it was necessary to survey them also so that the “entire truth” of the Gyanvapi mosque is revealed. Following an earlier petition by five women devotees, the court had ordered the ASI to conduct a survey of the Gyanvapi mosque complex, barring the “wazukhana” used for ritual ablutions before namaz.

The southern cellar of the mosque was opened last week and a priest performed prayers. The court had allowed regular prayers in the cellar on the plea by Shailendra Kumar Pathak, who claimed that his maternal grandfather, priest Somnath Vyas, used to perform prayers there till December 1993. Hindu litigants claim a temple was destroyed during Aurangzeb’s rule to build Gyanvapi mosque.