'Prahalad temple to be rehabilitated after 23 years'

Pakistan Evacuee Properties Trust (PEPT) Chairman Siddique-ul-Farroq has announced to rehabilitate the Prahalad temple after 23 years of its destruction. Addressing a press conference at Multan Press Club here on Monday, Siddique-ul-Farooq said, "We will rebuild this historical temple at its original site and we do hope that India will also restore the Babri Mosque."
He said that re-construction of temple would start in the first week of July, 2015. The Prahaladpuri temple said to have been built by Prahalad Maharaja in Multan decades years ago. It was completely destroyed in 1992 in retaliation of a news report of Babri Masjid demolition in India by a large crowd of Hindu Karsevaks (volunteers) who had entirely destroyed the 16th-Century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh) India. The Chairman further said, "We respect to worship places and sentiments of the minorities and we would never even think to desecrate these places". The Prahladapuri temple like the Sun Temple of Multan had been destroyed after Muslim conquest of Multan, suffered several material losses and was reduced to a nondescript shrine by the 19th Century. The temple was built on a high platform inside Multan Fort, adjacent to tomb of Hazrat Baha'ul Haq Zakariya, and was before 1992 a prominent landmark of Multan. It had a main hall, circumlocutory and skylights and a large Mandapa. The central hall had a replica of the deity under a Baldachin (a luxurious type of cloth from Baghdad) adjacent to temple was Dharamshala complex. Traditions, however, claim that the original temple was a columnar structure and both the roof and the columns supporting it were made of pure GOLD. It is further stated that for some unknown reason, this entire building sank into ground and over it was built a new temple.After the partition of India, many Hindus migrated and the affairs of temple were managed by minority Hindus of city. The original deity of Lord Narasimha was brought to India by Baba Narayan Das Batra from Multan at the time of partition in 1947.