By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office on Sunday condemned the demolition of a century-old mosque in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, calling it part of what the government described as an “Islamophobic and Hindutva-driven campaign” to erase Islamic heritage from the country.
The mosque stood inside the Saharanpur collectorate, the complex housing the local district magistrate’s office, and was torn down around on Saturday under heavy police and paramilitary deployment. Officials sealed all five gates of the collectorate complex before the demolition began and barred entry to outsiders, and a heavy police presence that included Rapid Action Force personnel was deployed at the site and in the surrounding area. Bulldozers and other heavy equipment had been moved onto the grounds overnight.
Foreign Office spokesperson Ambassador Sajjad Haider Khan, responding to questions from reporters, described the demolition as “a reprehensible action against a historic Islamic place of worship” and said it amounted to “yet another manifestation of the broader Islamophobic and Hindutva-driven campaign to erase the Islamic heritage.” He recalled that the 1992 demolition of the Babri Mosque remains “an enduring symbol of this ideology of religious intolerance, prejudice and hatred.”
“Pakistan calls upon the international community to take immediate cognisance of the systematic persecution of Muslims by Indian authorities,” the Foreign Office said in its statement, pointing to the “continued desecration and destruction of their places of worship under state patronage.” Khan called for Indian authorities to be held accountable for actions he said undermined the religious freedom and cultural heritage of the country’s minorities, particularly Muslims.
The demolition followed a lengthy legal fight. A city magistrate’s court had declared the mosque an unauthorized structure in July; that order found the mosque occupied roughly 315 square meters of government land and imposed a compensation penalty of about ₹6.41 crore for what it called long-term unauthorized occupation. The mosque’s side challenged the ruling before the district judge’s court, which heard the matter on 17 separate occasions before dismissing the petition on September 2 and upholding the magistrate’s order. The district administration said the original petition against the mosque had been filed by a regional Bajrang Dal convener in 2025.
The mosque’s defenders dispute the government’s account of the property entirely. They maintain the mosque had been in continuous use for daily prayers for more than a century, qualifying it as a protected “waqf by user” property registered with the Waqf Board, and argue that revenue records show private ownership in the names of two individuals — Wahid Khan and Yaqub Khan — predating the collectorate itself. The mosque committee had presented an electricity bill dated January 1, 1911, to support its claim that the structure was more than a century old. Estimates of the mosque’s precise age varied across accounts, with some placing it at roughly 115 years old and others describing it simply as more than a century old.
The demolition set off immediate political backlash in India. Saharanpur’s Samajwadi Party member of parliament, Imran Masood, called the demolition order “unconstitutional,” alleged that relevant documents had been ignored, and said he and his associates would petition the High Court. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav wrote on social media, without directly naming the demolition, that “using the shield of law to perpetrate illegal acts may hold for a while, but it cannot last forever.” AAP Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh said the mosque predated India’s 1947 independence and was registered with the Waqf Board, and alleged it was demolished without the board being made a party to the legal proceedings.
Samajwadi Party MP Iqra Hasan, who represents Kairana, said she was placed under house arrest at her residence as she attempted to travel to Saharanpur following the demolition. Uttar Pradesh’s Minority Welfare Minister, Om Prakash Rajbhar, said the demolition had been carried out in accordance with the court’s order.
Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and a member of parliament from Hyderabad, condemned the demolition and asked, “Does the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion no longer apply to Muslims? Why is it that our places of worship are constantly bulldozed on flimsy grounds?” Owaisi maintained the mosque dated to 1911 and argued the surrounding government compound was built afterward.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office statement placed the Saharanpur demolition within a longer pattern it has repeatedly raised with Indian authorities. It pointed to the 2024 demolition of the thavarious Akhonji mosque, which stood for more than 600 years in Delhi’s Mehrauli district before it was razed without prior notice, and to the 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya by a Hindu mob — an event that touched off riots across India in which an estimated 2,000 people, most of them Muslim, were killed.
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