Masjid Akhonji, which its caretakers say is 600 years old, was razed during a drive to remove \u2018illegal\u2019 structures
\nNEW DELHI
\nBulldozers have knocked down a centuries-old mosque in India\u2019s capital, a member of the building\u2019s managing committee said Thursday, during a demolition drive to remove \u201cillegal\u201d structures from a forest reserve.
\nThe demolition comes at a sensitive time in India with nationalist activists emboldened in their long campaign for the replacement of several prominent mosques with Hindu temples.
\nThe Masjid Akhonji in New Delhi, which its caretakers say is around 600 years old, was home to 22 students enrolled in an Islamic boarding school.
\nIt was torn down on Tuesday in a forest of Mehrauli, an affluent neighbourhood dotted with centuries-old ruins from settlements predating modern Delhi.
\nMohammad Zaffar, a member of the mosque\u2019s managing committee, told AFP that it had not received any prior notice before a demolition carried out \u201cin the dark of the night\u201d.
\nHe said many graves in the mosque compound were also desecrated, and no one was allowed to take out copies of the Holy Quran or other materials from inside the mosque before it was razed.
\n\u201cMany of our revered figures and my own ancestors were buried there. There is no trace of the graves now,\u201d Zaffar told AFP.
\n\u201cThe rubble from the mosque and the graves has been removed and dumped somewhere else.\u201d
\nThe Delhi Development Authority, the city\u2019s main land management agency responsible for carrying out the demolitions, did not respond to AFP\u2019s requests for comment.
\nA heavy police presence had barricaded roads outside the grounds on Thursday and refused access to the site.
\nThe demolition took place barely a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a grand new Hindu temple in the northern city of Ayodhya, built on grounds once home to the centuries-old Babri mosque.
\nThat mosque was torn down in 1992 in a campaign spearheaded by members of Modi\u2019s party, sparking sectarian riots that killed 2,000 people nationwide, most of them Muslims.
\nHindu activist groups have also laid claim to the disputed Gyanvapi mosque in the Indian holy city of Varanasi, which they say was built over a Hindu temple during the Muslim Mughal empire centuries ago.
\nHindu worshippers entered the Gyanvapi mosque on Thursday to pray after a local court gave them permission to do so.
\nCalls for India to enshrine Hindu supremacy have rapidly grown louder since Modi took office in 2014, making the country\u2019s roughly 210-million-strong Muslim minority increasingly anxious about their future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Masjid Akhonji, which its caretakers say is 600 years old, was razed during a drive to remove \u2018illegal\u2019 structures NEW DELHI Bulldozers have knocked down a centuries-old mosque in India\u2019s capital, a member of the building\u2019s managing committee said Thursday, during a demolition drive to remove \u201cillegal\u201d structures from a forest reserve. The demolition comes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-384770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n