The Varanasi district court on Thursday issued a notice to the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee after Hindu plaintiffs sought carbon dating of a shivling in the Gyanvapi mosque complex.
The Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee has to file their response by 29 September.
This development comes after a Varanasi court earlier this month on 12 September dismissed a plea of the Anjuman Islamia Masjid committee challenging the maintainability of the suit filed by five Hindu women seeking worshipping rights in the Gyanvapi mosque compound.
Advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, representing the Hindu side in the Gyanvapi mosque case, said they had filed an application to demand carbon dating.
The worshippers, on the basis of the facts mentioned in the Sanatana Scriptures and history books, assert that the article discovered on May 16 during the survey of Advocate Commissioner is Shivalingam, the plea said.
The plea further said that the worshippers have the right to Darshan and Pooja of the Shivlingam in the exercise of the powers under Article 25 of the Constitution and their right to religion should not be impeded on whimsical grounds/allegation raised by Muslims/defendant that the discovered article is a fountain and not a Shivlingam.
The plaintiffs sincerely feel that they have a right to establish that Shivlingam found/discovered on 16 May is ancient and they, along with crores of devotees, are entitled to worship and perform rituals of Shivlingam at the very same place. Therefore, it is necessary that a proper scientific investigation be conducted under the authority of ASI to determine the nature, age, and other allied matters relating to or connected with the aforesaid Shivalingam.
For proper adjudication of the case, it is necessary that a scientific investigation be conducted regarding the length, width, height, age, make up, and constituents of the Shivalingam. The plea said all these facts can come before the Hon’ble Court only through a scientific investigation in regard to Shivalingam by carbon dating or by any other scientific method conducted by ASI.
The plea further said that carbon dating is a radiometric dating technique that uses the decay of carbon-14 to determine the age of organic materials like wood, leather, etc. as old as 58,000–62,000 years.
According to the petition, ASI performs carbon dating/scientific processes on an antiquity, structure, or any article to determine its age and other information for determining the nature of the article/antiquity/motifs/structure.
The plea added that ASI has a mechanism to find out the age, composition, nature, and other relevant things relating to any monument, relic, artefact, etc., howsoever ancient it may be.