The “grave” at Khanjar Galli in the city eventually turned out be a fake one, as categorically declared by Muslim Ulemas at the end of a two-hour-long early morning operation carried out peacefully on Wednesday. This brought the much needed relief to the people, district administration and the police from the more than two-month-long tensions and threats to communal harmony and peace.
The exercise commenced at about 1-30 a.m. in the presence of the Deputy Commissioner and District Magistrate N. Jayaram, Police Commissioner S. Ravi, Deputy Police Commissioner Anupam Agarwal, Ulema Tajuddin Quadri of Hire Bagewadi and a few other Ulemas of North Karnataka districts. It took nearly two hours to excavate the grave and the soil beneath. The police had cordoned off the entire area before excavating it.
When there was no sign of any grave, the ground was cleared by 3.50 a.m. This exercise was initially planned on Monday night but could not be carried out due to the ill-health of some of the Ulemas.
Syed Tanveer Hashmi of Vijayapura said: “The alleged grave was exhumed as per Shariat (Muslim personal law) and we found no evidence in support of the claims of a grave.”
To a question on what eventually was a mischief holding the entire city to ransom for more than two months, he said: “Nobody should indulge in such activities and use religion to create tensions and disharmony in society.”
It may be recalled that the ‘grave’ cropped up overnight when the Belagavi City Corporation had taken up construction of a parking area for vehicles more than two months ago. Subsequently, there were communal clashes harming communal harmony and peace in the city. The Small-Scale Industries and District in-charge Minister Satish L. Jarkiholi, Mr. Jayaram, and Mr. Ravi had used their good offices to develop a consensus and elicited cooperation from the Ulemas and the local community to resolve the row.
A major problem associated with the alleged grave now stood resolved, yet the problems for the district administration are still far from over as a community member had claimed ownership of the site where the grave existed and filed a writ petition in the High Court, Dharwad claiming ownership of the site.
