Friday, March 29, 2024

Barabanki mosque case: Allahabad HC grants protection from coercive action to accused persons

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By PTI
LUCKNOW: The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has directed the Barabanki police not to take any coercive action against the accused persons booked for allegedly manipulating revenue documents to build a mosque in the tehsil compound of Ramsanehi Ghat till a probe conclusion report is filed.

The court, however, directed the accused-petitioners to cooperate with the police in the investigation and present themselves before them whenever required.

A bench of Justice A R Masoodi and Justice A K Srivastava passed the order on a writ petition filed by Mushtaq Ali and others.

The court granted the state counsel three weeks to obtain details from the police of the documents that were allegedly manipulated by the accused to show the mosque as a Waqf Board property.

The petitioners have sought quashing of the FIR lodged by the administration in the matter.

They argued that the FIR did not mention any documents which were allegedly manipulated.

The state counsel could not respond to this.

Considering this, the bench granted the state counsel time to get the details from the police and passed an interim order granting protection to the petitioners from any coercive action.

The Barabanki administration had demolished the said mosque on May 17, declaring it illegal.

A case of fraud was registered against a former inspector of the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board and seven members of the management committee of the mosque.

The case against them was registered on a complaint lodged by Barabanki District Minority Welfare Officer Son Kumar.

In his complaint, Kumar alleged that the “illegal construction” was declared a Waqf Board property on the basis of fake papers in a span of a few days and eight people were made members of its management committee, according to the police.

Among those booked are mosque committee chairman Mushtaq Ali, vice president Vakil Ahmed, secretary Mohammad Anees and members Mohammad Mustakim, Dastgir and Afzal.

Former Waqf Board inspector Mohammad Taha has also been booked.

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