A strange case has come to light in Imartpur Udho village of Mainather District, Uttar Pradesh, where a Muslim man was stopped by the police from building a mazaar of a Pir in someone else’s field. As per the Police, on March 21, they got a complaint from one Sunderlal that a Muslim man identified as Mureed Tahir was building a Pir mazaar in his field.
https://twitter.com/OmPraka43229608/status/1373552128384364544?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwTahir was ordered by Pir to build Mazaar in a dream
According to Ramveer Singh, the Station in-charge of Mainather Police Station, the land where the mazaar was being built by Mureed Tahir belongs to a man named Sunderlal. As two communities were involved in the case that could have led to communal tension in the region, the Police rushed to the spot and stopped the construction work. They arrested Tahir and initiated a probe against him.
On questioning, Tahir claimed that he was forcefully encroaching Sunderlal’s land because a “Pir Baba came to his dream and ordered him to build a mazaar” in Sunderlal’s fields. The next morning he reached in the fields located between Imartpur Paudhon and Madhupuri to start the construction of the mazaar.
Land grabbing on the pretext of religious structures is not new
There have been several cases of land grabbing on the pretext of religious structures in the past. Recently, a case came to light where Muslims grabbed land used by Hindus for religious practices and converted it into a cemetery in West Bengal.
In Uttar Pradesh, the Yogi government has ordered the removal of illegal religious structures built by encroaching lands on the sides of the roads. The order was passed based on the judgment by the High Court. The administration has started removing such buildings in the state.