Public gatherings in Ayodhya barred as court verdict nears

MUMBAI: India has barred public gatherings in the town of Ayodhya as the Supreme Court started hearing final arguments on Monday to decide whether a Hindu temple should be built on the ruins of a mosque in a long-running dispute.

The razing of Babri mosque by Hindu mobs in 1992 led to one of officially secular India’s deadliest bouts of communal riots, in which at least 2,000 people, most of them Muslim, were killed across the country.

Hindu groups believe the site is the birthplace of Lord Ram and have intensified calls for a temple to be built there under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.

Modi’s BJP-led government came to power in 2014 on a promise of building a temple on the site in the northern town. Authorities have imposed an emergency law in Ayodhya under which public assembly of more than four people is banned.