Mosque on temple land faces threat of demolition in Chennai

Former tenant had played fraud and sold the land to Nungambakkam Muslim Welfare Association in 1981

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.