New Delhi: It was the sound of bulldozers at Akhunji Masjid, a 13th-century mosque in Mehrauli that lay some 400 metres from the Qutub Minar, that woke up Imam Zakir Hussain at the crack of dawn Tuesday. “There were a total of 10 bulldozers,” Hussain, who’s been associated with the mosque for 14 years, told ThePrint.
Within hours, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which is responsible for developing commercial land in the national capital, had razed the entire premises — not just the shrine but also the Bahrul Uloom madrassa that was home to 25 children. A graveyard on the premises was also allegedly razed.
The children, most of them orphans, were taken to the woods nearby and ordered to remain there in the cold until the drive was over, Hussain said.
“They demolished everything. No notice was served,” Hussain said, as he surveyed the barricades on the road leading to the mosque. “The official confiscated my phone before I could inform others about what was happening.”
The demolition has sparked a ripple of unease within the community, given that there could be more such actions. At least four mosques across New Delhi, including the Shahi Masjid in Dhaula Kuan, are at risk of being demolished by various authorities such as the DDA and New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) on the grounds of being unauthorised, ThePrint has found.
The DDA says that the Akhunji mosque was an illegal structure that stood on the reserved forest land of Sanjay Van.
In a statement shared with ThePrint, the DDA said the mosque stood in the southern part of the Delhi Ridge — an elevated structure that forms part of the Northern Aravalli leopard wildlife corridor. The authority said it was merely complying with orders by the Ridge Management Board, a body constituted in 1995 for the protection of the ridge, to clear illegal encroachments.
“The Sanjay Van is a reserved forest spread over an area of 780 acre, which is part of the Southern Ridge. As per the Ridge Management Board, the ridge area should be free from all types of illegal encroachment,” DDA’s statement read, adding that 5,000 sqm of land had been reclaimed in the exercise.
The Print tried to reach various officials of the Delhi Police for their comments on the demolition via WhatsApp and calls. This report will be updated if and when they respond.
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‘It was horrifying’
Speaking to ThePrint, Hussain said not a single official present at Tuesday’s demolition could answer his repeated question: “How can such an old mosque can be an encroachment?”
According to official documents reviewed by ThePrint, in January 2014, the Lieutenant Governor, acting on a Delhi High Court order dated 19 May 1997, ordered a demarcation of the mosque land as part of an exercise to identify the extent of illegal encroachments.
These documents quote the Delhi HC as saying that the existing graves should not be destroyed. “The only thing that remains is to ensure that the fencing is so made as not to demolish any grave. I direct that authorities should carry out the fencing of the monument/graveyard and, in doing so, they should not demolish any of the existing graves,” the order said.
However, residents of the area who witnessed the demolition alleged that the graves had been dug, and the gravestones removed.
“Shrouds came out from the graves. It was a horrifying scene,” said Shoaib Khan, a 39-year-old resident who had buried his newborn son in the graveyard 13 days ago.
“Our fathers and their fathers are buried here. Entire families are buried here. Some of the graves are very old. There was even a grave of a Sufi saint.”
According to Hussain, the Delhi HC had only ordered a demarcation exercise in the area.
Since 2014, he said, the mosque management committee — the body looking after the mosque — had been unsuccessfully pushing the DDA to issue directions for the demarcation and fencing of the entire compound to distinctly mark the heritage structure.
On its part, the DDA says the Mehrauli Ridge has been under tremendous pressure “due to ever-increasing urbanisation and development”.
“To protect and develop this heritage into a green belt, DDA in the 1970s carved this area of 784 acres now called Sanjay Van. It is tucked in adjacent to Qutub Minar & is clockwise surrounded by the Qutub Institutional area, Aurobindo Marg, Mehrauli-Kishengarhand Aruna Asaf Ali Marg,” the DDA says in its document about Sanjay Van.
Coming under South Delhi, Sanjay Van is one of the most thickly wooded areas of the national capital.
In its statement, the DDA said it was acting on the recommendation of a panel set up to assess the encroachment. This panel, set up under the chairmanship of the district magistrate, South Delhi, had suggested removing the “illegal structures”.
When ThePrint visited the area, authorities had imposed prohibitory orders under Section 144 and cordoned off the demolition site.
Hussain and others are now pinning their hopes on the judiciary, saying they plan to move court. “Whatever the court decides we will accept that. We hope that justice prevails,” he told ThePrint.
Sohail Hashmi, a Delhi-based oral historian and heritage conservationist, told ThePrint that the mosque was part of a list of 3,000 monuments of Delhi, commissioned by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and published in 1920. It was Maulvi Zafar Hasan, an assistant superintendent of the ASI in 1920, who helped the body prepare its list of monuments in Delhi, he said.
The list was made available in three volumes, called The Monuments of Delhi: Lasting Splendour of the Great Mughals and others’.
“In Volume 3 of this list on Pages 83 and 84, Idgah of Old Delhi and Masjid Akhunji are mentioned respectively. The idea was that the British wanted to know what structures they could demolish to build the new city. Hasan gave the information of the date and history of these monuments for protection,” he said.
While the exact date of when the structure was built is unknown, the date of repair is 1217, Hashmi said, reading from the list. “So it is a 13th-century structure. Monuments of Delhi, Volume 3, Pages 83 and 84, entry number 133 is Igdah of Old Delhi, which existed in times of Timur (the founder of the Timurid Empire who invaded India in the 14th century) and entry no. 135 is the mosque of Akhunji which existed in 1217, which means during the Slave Dynasty, post Razia Sultan’s time,” he said.
There was no reason for the demolition drive since there was no dispute over the structure, he said. “People just wanted a guarantee that they would never be asked to move the mosque since their mosque had existed much before the area was declared a reserved forest,” Hashmi said. “The DDA, has, on several occasions, said no religious places would be disturbed. Despite that, this happened.”
ThePrint tried to reach Bijay Shankar Patel, DDA’s public relations officer, about Hashmi’s allegations via WhatsApp and calls, and a response is awaited.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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It’s reserved forest land, how can buildings be allowed to remain. The city needs to breathe. Please don’t bring in a minority religious angle, temples were razed too.
The Print is a fake news peddler.