REUTERS, New Delhi

The first phase of Ram Temple in India’s town of Ayodhya will be completed in December and will open to devotees in January, an official said yesterday.

The site where the temple was built was bitterly contested for years, with both Hindus and Muslims laying claim to it.

Hindus say the site was the birthplace of Lord Ram, and was holy to them long before Muslim Mughals built the Babri mosque there in 1528.

A Hindu mob destroyed the mosque in 1992, triggering riots that killed about 2,000 people across India. Supreme court awarded the site to Hindus in 2019, paving the way for the construction of a Hindu temple.