Government bulldozers flattened a mosque and a madrasa on Sunday in Sambhal district, a new laboratory of Hindutva where over a dozen Islamic sites have been razed since a saffron claim on a mosque triggered street violence 14 months ago.
Sunday’s demolitions took place in Salempur Salar aka Hazipur village, 12km from Sambhal town where a court-ordered survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid — to look for Hindu relics and temple ruins — led to clashes in November 2024.
District magistrate Rajendra Pensiya said Hazipur residents had themselves begun pulling the structures down a few hours before the Yogi Adityanath government's bulldozers arrived.
"We had information that the villagers were demolishing the building, but our bulldozers finished the job. We are happy that the villagers are cooperating with us," he told reporters.
"There is very little government land in this village; so it was necessary to clear the encroached-on gram sabha land on which the mosque stood. We are going to allot the vacated land to 20 local Dalit families."
Dhirendra Singh, a tehsildar, said: "We have also imposed a ₹8.78-lakh fine on the encroachers (mosque management committee)."
A notice had been served on the management committee for the Madina Masjid, built on a 439sqm plot, two weeks ago.
Hazi Shamim, the caretaker of the mosque, said: "We knocked down the front wall of the mosque because the administration had convinced us that it stood on public land. But the government’s bulldozers brought down all the structures, including the madrasa."
He claimed: "The land had been allotted to us more than 40 years ago on the grounds that it was necessary to have a madrasa here."
District magistrate Pensiya said the administration would "soon" flatten and reclaim the graveyard of Mallak Shah Baba near Shankar Chowk in Sambhal town. He said it occupied public land.
On December 20, the administration had levelled over two dozen shops and houses that stood on the edges of another graveyard, which adjoins the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal town.
A Hindutva group had alleged that when clashes broke out between a mob and the police during the survey of the mosque on November 24, 2024, stones had been thrown from these buildings.
The district magistrate had said that a survey had found that these buildings illegally occupied about 1,000sqm of the graveyard’s 4,780sqm area.
A Hindutva group has moved a local court demanding the handover of the Shahi Jama Masjid site on the alleged grounds that Mughal emperor Aurangzeb had demolished a Shiva temple and built the mosque over its ruins. The case is yet to be decided.
The Sambhal administration says it has a list of many more "illegal buildings" that it plans to demolish.
Tehsildar Singh said the authorities had received the first complaint against the Hazipur mosque in June 2018 but couldn’t act because of "other engagements".