A plea has been filed in a Mathura court demanding that Muslims be restrained from offering prayers at the city’s Shahi Idgah mosque, PTI reported on Tuesday.

A slew of petitions with demands like removal of the mosque and handing it over to the Hindus are already pending in Mathura courts. The petitioners – Hindutva groups and individuals – claim that the site where the mosque stands is the birthplace of the Hindu deity Krishna. They have also claimed that Mughal emperor Aurangzeb had built the mosque after destroying a Krishna temple.

The fresh petition filed on May 13 by a group of lawyers and law students also claims that Krishna was born at the site. “Since the structure has been constructed on the remains of a Hindu temple, it is akin to a temple and does not qualify as the merit of a mosque,” advocate Shailendra Singh, one of the petitioners, told PTI.

The application sought directions from the court that an advocate commissioner should assess the site “on the lines of [the] Gyanvapi mosque”, to determine “the existence of Hindu artefacts and ancient religious inscriptions on the mosque premises”, The Indian Express reported.

On May 12, a Varanasi court had allowed a survey commission to carry out videography inside the Gyanvapi mosque, located next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The order was passed on a petition filed by five Hindu women last year, seeking permission to offer daily prayers and observe rituals at the back of the western wall of the mosque. They have claimed that an image of the Hindu deity Shringar Gauri exists at the site.

On May 16, the Varanasi court passed an order to seal a portion of the mosque after the lawyer representing Hindu women claimed that an idol of the Hindu deity Shiva was found after draining the mosque’s wazu khana – or ablution tank. The mosque committee has said that the object is not a shivling, but a part of a stone fountain in the wazu khana.