A civil suit was filed before the court of civil judge, senior division, Mathura, on behalf of child deity Bhagwan Shri Krishna Virajman, seeking the removal of the Shahi Idgah, adjacent to the Shri Krishna temple complex at Mathura.

One Ranjana Agnihotri, a resident of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, has filed the suit.

The UP Sunni Central Waqf Board and the Committee of Management of Trust of Shahi Idgah have been arraigned as defendants in the suit.

The suit seeks recovery of 13.37 acres of land situated within the area of the temple.

The suit claims that the trust, with the help of some Muslims, encroached upon the land belonging to Shri Krishna Janamasthan Trust and the deity, and erected a structure.

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The birthplace of Lord Krishna lies beneath the structure raised by the trust, the suit said.

It was also claimed that Shri Krishna Janamsthan Seva Sansthan, which is the governing body of the temple complex, entered into an illegal compromise with the Shahi Idgah trust with a view to grab the property in question.

“The Shree Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sansthan is working against the interest of the deity and devotees and fraudulently entered into a compromise with the Committee of Management of Trust Masjid Idgah (Trust) in 1968 conceding a considerable portion of property belonging to the deity and the trust,” the suit said.

The civil judge, Mathura, passed a judgement on the suit regarding the alleged “compromise between the Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sansthan and the Trust” on July 20, 1973.

The present suit has now prayed for “cancelling this judgement”.

What may, however, act as a legal bar to this new suit would be the law passed in 1991: Places of Worship (Special Provisions Act). This law was passed at the height of Ram Janmabhoomi dispute and seeks to protect all religious structures as they existed at the time of Independence with the exception of the disputed site at Ayodhya.

Thus, conversion of mosques into temples or vice versa is barred as per the Act. Since the Ayodhya land was exempted, the Supreme Court had invoked this law while awarding the disputed site at Ayodhya to child deity Ram Lalla while reaffirming that similar cases cannot be entertained with respect to other sites.