KK Muhammed was with me during excavation at Ayodhya: BB Lal

NEW DELHI: Former director general (DG) of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) BB Lal and at least three archaeologists have vouched that KK Muhammed was part of the team that excavated the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site at Ayodhya in 1976-77.


BB Lal, 98, told TOI in an email that KK Muhammed was part of his team.

"It is a fact that Shri KK Muhammed was there with me when I was excavating the Ram Janmabhoomi area in Ayodhya," he said.

This was in response to a news item that appeared in TOI on October 12 in which Syed Ali Rizvi, chairman, department of history, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), alleged that KK Muhammed was never part of BB Lal's team.

Earlier, in an interview published in TOI on October 5, Muhammed had, among other things, claimed that he was the only Muslim archaeologist in the team led by BB Lal which had excavated the Ram Janmabhoomi site at Ayodhya in 1976-77.

However, Rizvi refuted Muhammed's claims and said the latter's name occurred nowhere in the reports filed by BB Lal and published in the ASI Annual Reports.

Besides BB Lal, KK Muhammed and at least three other members in the team have rubbished Rizvi’s assertion.

Ramakant Chaturvedi, who retired as director of Municipal Museum, Gwalior in 2007, said Muhammed had participated in the excavation at Ayodhya in 1976-77 as a trainee. "Muhammed was a student of ASI’s School of Archaeology at Delhi. He was with me. He is a dedicated archaeologist. We were witness to the Babri mosque’s bases having Hindu pillars," he said.

He said Rizvi was wrong in stating that Muhammed was not part of the team. "Who can be a bigger witness than me?" he said.

Giving details of the excavation, Chaturvedi, 75, said it was undertaken under a project called Archaeology of Ramayan Sites. The project was led by BB Lal, who was the ASI DG from 1968 to 1972 and director of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla.

The project was inaugurated in Ayodhya in 1973 by then Union culture minister Saiyid Nurul Hassan and then Uttar Pradesh chief minister HN Bahuguna. Excavations were carried out at seven places - Ram Janmabhoomi, Hanuman Garhi, Kanal Bhawan, Asharfi Bhawan, Jhumki Ghat, Bharat Kund and Nandigram, he said.

Rajnath Singh Kaw, who retired as ASI’s chief photographer in 2005, claimed that Muhammed was not just part of Lal’s excavation team but also the only Muslim in it.

On Muhammed’s name not figuring in the ASI’s Annual Reports, he said it was because the names of trainees were not included, only names of the members of the project were mentioned.

He remembers Muhammed as a student of School of Archaeology which was later shifted from Delhi to Greater Noida and renamed Institute of Archaeology.

Kaw, 74, said he was assisting Lal who was the core fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies and later became its director. “Rizvi must have given a statement against Muhammed because some people always want to remain in the news,” he said.



Ashok Pandey, who retired in 2016 as superintending archaeologist at Bhopal, was Muhammed’s classmate at the School of Archaeology. He said Muhammed and 10 other students of the school were part of the team which participated in the excavation at Ayodhya in 1976-77.

He said the School of Archaeology would conduct entrance examination in July-August to admit about 12 candidates for the one-year post-graduate (PG) diploma course in archaeology every year. The classes would commence in September-October. These students would be sent by ASI for a two-month training in excavation between December and February every year. This is because excavations generally take place in the winter, he said.

Pandey, 63, said it was during this part of the training that the students had joined BB Lal for the excavation at Ayodhya.

Muhammed also rubbished Rizvi's claim. "Rizvi’s statement is false. He should have verified facts from ASI as well as others who had participated in the excavation before going to the press," he said.

Coming down heavily on Rizvi, he said it was a deliberate attempt by the AMU professor to derail negotiations between Hindus and Muslims. "It is because the communist group knows that a powerful section of the Muslim community and intelligentsia are in favour of finding an amicable solution to the Ayodhya case," he said.

Muhammed said Rizvi had earlier also given “false statements” in his case with regard to conservation works at Fatehpur Sikri.

"Rizvi is habitual of making false statements. He had been suspended by the then AMU vice-chancellor Zamir Uddin Shah for using derogatory words. He was reinstated only after he apologised," Muhammed said.