New Delhi: Muslims cannot lay claim to the temple which existed at the disputed land in Ayodhya, dating back to 2nd century BC, only because they offered namaz at the site, said the counsel for deity Ram Lalla in the Supreme Court on Friday.
Senior advocate C S Vaidyanathan said that even a street could be used for namaz but it does not mean that the street would become a mosque. “Prayers had been offered in the structure does not mean that possession of the site is valid for Muslims,” he said.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justices S A Bobde, D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S Abdul Nazeer asked how could it be said that the structure was religious in nature. Vaidyanathan clarified that ASI found sculpture of divine couple during the excavation and the pilars also contained picture of lotus and other deities which showed that it was a temple. And that these images of deities are not found in mosques but only found in the temples. Therefore the site held religious sanctity for Hindus.
The bench although asked the lawyer to place photographs taken by the court commissioner in 1950 saying those images would be more relevant than photographs of 1990s.
