If a former sanitation worker’s spine-chilling tale of mass burials in the temple town of Dharmasthala in Karnataka is indeed true, then it’s time for a reckoning.
The worker, who was employed by the Dharmasthala Manjunathaswamy temple and was in hiding for 11 years, claims his conscience does not allow him to stay silent any longer.
His complaint to the police, that he was ‘forced’ to burn and bury the bodies of hundreds of women and men between 1995 and 2014, has the ingredients of a macabre crime saga—serial rapist-killers preying on women who vanished without a trace. Their bodies are buried in the forests along Nethravathi river and the perpetrators are allegedly persons of significant influence.
While the whistleblower’s timeline partly corresponds with the unusually high 416 cases of missing persons and unnatural deaths registered in the region since the 1980s, the unresolved question over the killers is creating turmoil, especially among the political classes.
There is also the damning story of Sujata Bhat, who has turned up after 22 years to seek justice for her medico daughter Ananya, who had vanished in 2003; Sujata claims she was attacked by the temple authorities. Now, several families are alleging that the local police did not properly investigate the missing cases and are demanding that all of them be reopened.
News reports and posts were systematically brought down with court orders. No doubt, influence was exerted at several levels.
The worker, a Dalit, sought protection for himself and his family under the Witness Protection Act, 2018 before turning up at the police station with his advocates and a bag containing exhumed skeletal remains.
The government has formed a team to investigate his complaint, but has excluded the controversial Soujanya case, which was closed by the Karnataka High Court in 2024 without convicting anyone.
There could be a link, though, to 17-year-old Soujanya’s rape and murder on her way home from college in October 2012. Her family has maintained that a religious leader shielded the criminals and that the case was deliberately weakened.
BJP leaders, while welcoming the probe, have cautioned against falsely implicating the temple authorities. Some have termed the case an attempt to defame the sacred town. Whether the killers are ordinary people or religious leaders, the investigators should be free to do their job thoroughly and professionally.
Civil society must keep up pressure and demand justice for Soujanya, Ananya and all the other missing daughters of Dharmasthala.