Indian court gives disputed religious site to Hindus in landmark ruling

NEW DELHI/AYODHYA, India (Reuters) – India’s Supreme Court on Saturday awarded a bitterly contested religious site to Hindus, dealing a defeat to Muslims who also claim the land that has sparked some of the country’s bloodiest riots since independence.

The ruling in the dispute between Hindu and Muslim groups paves the way for the construction of a Hindu temple on the site in the northern town of Ayodhya, a proposal long supported by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindunationalist party.

Saturday’s judgment, which is likely to be viewed as a win for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its backers, was criticized as unfair by a lawyer for the Muslim group involved in the case.

However, the group’s leader said ultimately it would accept the verdict and called for peace between India’s majority Hindus and Muslims, who constitute 14% of its 1.3 billion people.

In 1992, a Hindu mob destroyed the 16th-century Babri Mosque on the site, triggering riots in which about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed across the country.

Court battles over the ownership of the site followed.

Jubilant Hindus, who have long campaigned for a temple to be built on the mosque’s ruins, cheered and set off fire crackers in Ayodhya after the court decision was announced.

The five-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, reached a unanimous decision to hand the plot of 2.77 acres (1.1 hectares), about the size of a soccer field, to the Hindu group.

The court also directed that another plot of five acres (two hectares) in Ayodhya be provided to the Muslim group that contested the case. That was not enough to mollify some critics.