HC doesn't suspend Hindu prayers at Gyanvapi cellar

The Allahabad High Court on Friday didn't suspend the offering of Hindu prayers in the southern cellar of the Gyanvapi Masjid in Varanasi, adjourning the hearing of the mosque committee's petition challenging a lower court's order permitting this to next week without passing an order.

Justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal heard both sides at length and adjourned the case to Tuesday. This means that the Hindu rituals at the cellar - also known as Vyas ji ka tehkhana - which began shortly after midnight on Thursday, will continue.

The Hindu side welcomed the adjournment and Sudhir Tripathi, a counsel for Shailendra Kumar Pathak Vyas, said, "Justice has been done by [the district court's] order" allowing the prayers.

The rituals - performed by priests of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple Omprakash Mishra and Ganeshwar Shashtri-began at 12.40 am on Thursday and lasted till 1.30 am, the first time that Hindu prayers were allowed in the 17th-century Islamic shrine since December 1993.

Currently, prayers are being offered five times every day in the cellar - Mangla at 3.30 am, Bhog at 12pm, Apranh at 4pm, Sanykaal at 7pm and Shayan at 10.30pm.

"Our entire petition is our prayer. We urge the court that situation, which existed in the cellar before January 17, should be restored," said SM Yasin, joint secretary of Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee.

The developments come two days after district judge AK Vishvesha granted the family of a late priest the right to resume prayers in the southern cellar of the mosque after three decades, saying that the petitioner Shailendra Kumar Pathak Vyas and a priest appointed by the Kashi Vishwanath trust, which manages the temple next door, will be allowed to enter the premises.