A mosque located for nearly 40 years on Valluvar Kottam High Road at Nungambakkam, a prime locality in the heart of Chennai city, is facing the threat of demolition since the Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal preferred by Nungambakkam Muslim Welfare Association (NMWA).
What’s more is that the Supreme Court has confirmed the Madras High Court’s January 2017 order declaring that the land on which the mosque had been constructed belonged to the Agastheeswarar Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal Devasthanam.
Dismissing NMWA’s second appeal pending since 1998, Justice G. Jayachandran of the High Court had on January 5, 2017, directed it to demolish the mosque and other superstructures and then hand over the vacant possession of the land to the Devasthanam.
Though NMWA was a bona fide purchaser of the property from V.G. Ramalingam, a former tenant of the Devasthanam, in 1981, the High Court ruled that the purchase would get nullified since Ramalingam had obtained a sale deed in his favour through fraudulent means.
The judge agreed with counsel for the Devasthanam A.K. Sriram that Ramalingam had cleverly invoked the Madras City Tenants Protection Act, 1921, and got a fraudulent sale deed executed in his name by the Registrar of Small Causes Court in 1980 without notice to the Devasthanam.
Thereafter, Ramalingam sold the property to NMWA in 1981 for a valuable consideration. Since the former tenant himself had no right to the property, the subsequent sale that had taken place at his instance would naturally have no leg to stand on, Justice Jayachandran held.
The judge also stated that NMWA would not be entitled to any compensation for the demolition of the mosque because the Devasthanam had filed a suit before the City Civil Court (CCC) as early as in 1982 and yet the mosque was constructed at the risk of being demolished any time.
The original suit was decreed in favour of the Devasthanam by an Assistant Judge of the CCC on November 29, 1991. A subsequent appeal suit, filed by NMWA in 1993, was dismissed by an Additional Judge on September 27, 1996, leading to the second appeal in the High Court in 1998.
A special leave petition was filed in the Supreme Court in 2017 itself against the High Court’s order. After five years, a Bench of Justices S. Abdul Nazeer and J.K. Maheshwari dismissed it on July 28 this year as they did not find any merit in it.
The dismissal by the highest appellate court has now empowered the Devasthanam to file an execution petition before the CCC for the enforcement of its 1991 decree to demolish the mosque and take vacant possession of the land.
On the other hand, NMWA has the option of entering into negotiations with the Devasthanam for purchasing the land on payment of due consideration if the latter and the Department of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments accept such a proposal.
