Woman says land allocated for Ayodhya mosque belongs to her

AYODHYA: A woman from Delhi has claimed that the land earmarked for the construction of a mosque in Ayodhya after the Supreme Court order in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case belongs to her family, and she will move the apex court to get its possession.

Following the Supreme Court's 2019 ruling, five acres of land was provided to the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board in Ayodhya's Dhannipur village.

Rani Punjabi, a resident of Delhi, claims these five acres a part of 28.35 acres of land owned by her family. Rani said she has all the documents of ownership and she will approach the SC to get it. However, Rani Punjabi's claims were denied by Zufar Farooqui, who is the head of the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust which has been formed for the construction of the mosque, saying her claims were already rejected by the Allahabad high court in 2021.

Farooqui, who is also the chairperson of the Sunni Central Waqf Board, said work on the entire project, including the construction of the mosque, will start from October this year.

According to Rani, her father Gyan Chand Punjabi had to leave the Punjab on the Pakistan side after Partition, and he moved to Faizabad (now Ayodhya district) where he was allotted the 28.35 acres in lieu of the land he had to leave behind.

She said her family used the land for farming until 1983, when her father's health deteriorated and the family settled in Delhi for his treatment. Since then, the land was progressively encroached upon, she claimed. It is not permissible to build a mosque on any disputed land in Islam.

However, Farooqui said, "There is no obstacle in the project. As far as the woman's claim on the land is concerned, the Allahabad HC had already rejected it in 2021. There are some minor issues which are being resolved and it is expected that work on the project will start by October."