A Sambhal court on Friday rejected the bail plea of Shahi Jama Masjid committee chief Zafar Ali after police said he had incited the violence that killed four people during a survey of the mosque on November 24 last year.

A police officer later told reporters that Ali had admitted during interrogation that he had gathered people outside the mosque that day at the behest of local Samajwadi Party MP Zia-ur-Rahman Barq.

The local court-ordered survey was meant to evaluate Hindu petitioners’ claim that Mughal emperor Aurangzeb had got the mosque built after demolishing a temple, and the site should therefore be handed over to Hindus.

Ali, who claims the police fired without provocation on a mob protesting the survey, was arrested on March 23, a day before he was to travel to Lucknow to depose before a judicial commission probing the violence.

“He (Ali) has said that Barq had called him from Bangalore and asked him to motivate people to gather near the mosque and oppose the survey,” a police officer was quoted as saying to local reporters after Ali had been taken back from the court to prison.

“Ali made several calls thereafter and asked people from the community to gather at the mosque gate and protest against the survey.”

A confession is admissible in court only if made before a judicial magistrate. Asked whether some outsiders had indeed gathered near the mosque during the survey and kept up a chant of “Jai Shri Ram” to provoke the mob, the officer said the case diary mentioned no such incident.

Ali had told reporters after the violence that some people, including the surveyors and the police, had provoked the mob and that police firing had killed the four victims.