Delhi: Historic 600-Year-old Mosque in Mehrauli Demolished Without Notice

In the early hours on January 31st, a centuries old mosque in Delhi’s Mehrauli, the Masjid Akhonji was abruptly demolished by officials from the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) under heavy police presence. The mosque, which stood for over 600 years, was razed to the ground without any prior notice. It has left the local residents, mosque-goers, and the Madrasa students shocked and in disbelief.

In a video that surfaced online the mosque’s imam, Imam Zakir Hussain mourned the loss of the mosque and stated that it not only housed a madrasa where students came to learn called the Madrasa Bahrul Uloom but also held the sacred graves of revered figures. The demolition allegedly took place just before the call to the morning prayers and caught the local residents and early day worshippers by surprise and shock.

The Imam has further accused the DDA officials of being careful to remove the demolition debris so as to hide signs of the demolition from the public. Furthermore, he has claimed that the authorities even forcefully took the phones from him and other people present at the incident due to which none of them could document the demolition. The Imam also further stated that the authorities did not even let him and others salvage the copies of the holy Qur’an before the demolition. Furthermore, the Imam has also stated that not only were the sacred artefacts and books within the mosque desecrated, but officials also destroyed the belongings and properties, such as food and clothing items, of the 22 students studying at the Madrasa.  The demolition, reportedly, took place with a considerable amount of police presence.

This shocking development comes only months after the DDA had expressly told a division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Sanjeev Narula at the Delhi High Court that no mosque, graveyard, or legally owned Waqf property would be demolished by the authorities in the Mehrauli Archaeological Park in response to a petition by the Delhi Waqf Board.

Citizens online have decried the “unconstitutional” nature of the demolition. The demolition comes in the line of various incidents where various state governments have selectively carried out demolitions of properties owned by Muslims. Recently as per a video posted by Hate Detector on the social media site, X, released in which the Assam Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, can be seen boasting about having conducted 50,000 demolitions of homes in the state and expressed that Assam does not get as much “publicity.”