Taj Mahal to resume night visits

The Taj Mahal china Inflatable Toys is to open on moonlit evenings 20 years after security fears ended night visits.

India's Supreme Court will allow the famous monument to love to open four nights a month, initially for three months.

The Taj, built in the 1600s by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a shrine for his wife, is a World Heritage site.

Only 400 visitors will air blown Inflatable Games be let in each night, and parking restrictions will be imposed around the marble mausoleum.

The Supreme Court announcement came as state officials in Uttar Pradesh were celebrating the Taj's 350th anniversary close to its site in the city of Agra.

State tourism minister Kaukab Hamid described the ruling as "heartening".

"This reopening of the Taj for moonlight viewing is going to draw fantastic crowds from across the globe," he said.

"We will ensure strict security and follow visitor guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court."

Tourist chiefs said more than 300,000 foreigners visited the Taj Mahal site in 2003, but numbers are down since the terror attacks in the US on 11 September 2001.

Night visits to the Taj, once a romantic highlight of any visit to India, were banned in 1984 amid fears that militant Sikhs battling the government would attack the shrine.

The Sikh insurgency ended in the mid-1990s, but Indian authorities have remained reluctant to let visitors back to the Taj after sunset.

During the height of tensions between India and Pakistan in 2001, officials drew up plans to camouflage the Taj to disguise it from possible Pakistani air attacks.

There were also fears that a militant Kashmiri separatist group, Laskhar-e-Toiba, was planning to try and blow up the shrine.