The Jammu and Kashmir police have launched a large-scale exercise to collect information on mosques in the Valley, as well as their imams, muezzins, members of their management committees and their charity wings.
While the exercise seeks information on the sect, capacity, construction cost, monthly budget and funding source of these mosques, it also demands granular personal details of those associated with the mosques, including the model of their mobile phone, its IMEI number, and details of their social media, ATM cards, ration cards, and credit cards.
A four-page form — one page for information on mosques and three pages for their members — is being distributed across various parts of the Kashmir Valley, The Indian Express has learnt.
It is for the first time that police are seeking information at this scale on mosques and their members. Beyond identifying a mosque’s ideological sect — Barelvi, Hanafi, Deobandi or Ahle-Hadith — the form requires details about its physical structure, number of floors, approximate construction cost and source of funds for its construction. It also seeks details about the monthly budget of the mosques, their bank account details, and how they are managed, as well as about the nature of land — whether state, milkiyat or shamilaat — on which the mosques are constructed.
The form also seeks complete family details of members of a mosque’s management committee, as well as its imam (person who leads prayer), muezzin (person who gives the call for prayer), khateebs (those who deliver Friday sermons) and the Bait-ul-Maal (the mosque’s charity wing).
The exercise seeks personal details like date of birth, phone number, email address and educational qualifications of those associated with a mosque.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.
