HYDERABAD: Stoking controversy, All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) member Abdul Raheem Qureshi said the Ram Janmabhoomi is in Pakistan and not Ayodhya.

He was speaking during the release of his book on the contentious issue called "Ayodhya Ka Tanaazah" (The Ayodhya Dispute) late on Sunday night at Urdu Maskan in the Old City. Releasing the book, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi remarked that given that the BJP is in power at the Centre, chances of justice being delivered with respect to the Babri Masjid demolition seemed bleak.

"In the book, I have reproduced the published research paper of archaeologist Jassu Ram in which he says that Ayodhya is not the birthplace of Ram. It was in a place previously called Ramderi in Pakistan. After the partition, the name of this place was changed to Rahmanderi," Qureshi told TOI on Monday. The "real" Ram Janmabhoomi is likely to be in Harappa, now in Pakistan, Qureshi claimed. "There were three excavations conducted at Ayodhya in UP and none threw light on the inhabitants there. But there is no evidence that there was any civilisation in the present Ayodhya, several centuries before Christ," he maintained.

Meanwhile, Owaisi questioned the rationale behind awarding the Bharat Ratna to former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the Padma Vibhushan to L K Advani. While he claimed that Vajpayee had made inflammatory speeches on December 5 in 1992, a day before the demolition of the mosque, the BJP's rath yatra led by Advani, before the ill-fated day, was responsible for creating communal hatred.

Owaisi later said that he would call a meeting in Delhi with all Muslim parliamentarians to discuss the Babri Masjid issue. He termed those willing to resolve the matter by means of talks as "traitors". He said that the MIM would support the AIMPLB with financial assistance to fight the case in the Supreme Court. "We want the SC to hear the case and arrive at a judgment as quickly as possible," he said.

Courtesy Times of India