When a man stepped into a police station in Karnataka's Dakshina Kannada district with a bag containing skeletal remains, what he brought was not merely a fragment of a bone, but a jarring crack in the silence that had surrounded the town of Dharmasthala for decades. The man, a former sanitation worker who had once cleaned the banks of the Nethravathi river, alleged that he had been coerced into burying and burning the bodies of numerous rape and murder victims—mostly women and schoolgirls—between 1995 and 2014. For nearly 11 years, he had been on the run, moving between states, shielding his identity, and living with the fear that he, too, would be eliminated. Now, haunted by memory and seeking redemption, he wanted to speak. And to dig.
The man claimed he had buried hundreds of bodies at the behest of powerful individuals in the town. He detailed a grim catalogue of assaults: women with acid-burnt faces, girls found strangled and stripped of their clothes, a young schoolgirl in uniform whose remains he buried with her schoolbag. One of the most disturbing accounts involved a girl between 12 and 15 years, found near a petrol bunk in Kalleri in 2010, half-naked and with signs of sexual assault. The complainant said he buried her where she fell. He also claimed to have witnessed the killing of homeless men, beggars and other vulnerable individuals, whose bodies he was ordered to dispose of in forested areas, often under duress and threats of death.
This whistleblower, whose identity has been kept confidential under the Witness Protection Act, first reached out to lawyers Ojaswi Gowda and Sachin Deshpande. On June 22, the advocates released a press statement revealing that their client was ready to lead investigators to burial sites and had already exhumed a body by himself. The details shared triggered a political and legal avalanche. By early July, the man had approached the Dakshina Kannada Superintendent of Police, submitting photographs of exhumed remains and formally seeking protection for himself and his family. A case was registered at the Dharmasthala police station on July 4 under Section 211(a) of the new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
As the story caught national attention, more voices began to emerge. One of them was Sujatha Bhat, a retired CBI stenographer from Bengaluru, whose daughter Ananya had gone missing during a college trip to Dharmasthala in 2003. Sujatha alleged that local police had refused to file a missing person complaint and accused her daughter of eloping. When Sujatha persisted, she claimed she was abducted, tied up and beaten up. She awoke three months later in a hospital with a stitched head wound and no memory of how she got there. Now, over two decades later, she believes her daughter may be among the bodies buried by the whistleblower.
The whistleblower’s complaint references a disturbing pattern—416 cases of missing persons and unnatural deaths reported from the region since the 1980s, many involving women. Despite this, there had been little political will or institutional effort to connect these disappearances until now.
On July 11, the whistleblower appeared before a magistrate in the Belthangady court to record his statement under Section 183 of the BNSS (formerly 164 CrPC), and handed over skeletal remains he claimed to have unearthed. His lawyers, however, protested that the court did not allow them to be present while he testified, despite his illiteracy and unfamiliarity with judicial procedure.
Yet what followed cast a dark shadow over the investigation. On July 17, the complainant’s lawyers wrote to the Chief Justice of India, alleging that confidential details of his July 14 police statement had been leaked and were now circulating on YouTube. In a video uploaded by a private individual with no ties to the case, specifics of the witness’s testimony were discussed, and the speaker claimed to have received the information from the police. The leak, the advocates argued, not only endangered the complainant’s life but also cast doubt on the neutrality of the police. Worse, there were hints that his formally approved witness protection could be revoked. The whistleblower himself wrote to the Chief Justice of India, pleading for protection and demanding a high-level probe into what he described as a serious breach of confidentiality.
The gravity of the allegations prompted pressure from civil society and women’s rights groups. Karnataka State Women’s Commission chairperson Dr Nagalakshmi Choudhary wrote to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah urging the formation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) comprising senior police officers to probe the mass burials. On July 19, the state government acted, constituting an SIT led by DGP Pronab Mohanty, with officers DIG M N Anucheth, Soumyalatha, and Jitendra Kumar Dayama as members. The SIT took over case files from local police on July 25 and began field work soon after.
On July 27, the complainant recorded his statement before the SIT and pointed out suspected burial sites in the forested area near the Nethravathi river. In the presence of revenue, forest and land records officials, the SIT began exhumation under tight security. At five initial sites, no remains were found. But on July 31, at Site No. 6, they struck bone—literally. Partial skeletal remains, including broken skull fragments believed to belong to a male victim, were recovered and sent for forensic examination.
Throughout the process, the whistleblower insisted on leading investigators to sites in person rather than divulging them in advance—a decision he said was motivated by fear that the evidence would be tampered with. The SIT is reportedly exploring the use of ground-penetrating radar to locate more potential burial spots, though the area’s wet soil and terrain pose challenges.
For many, the case raises uncomfortable questions about power, caste and justice. The complainant is a Dalit man alleging atrocities and coercion at the hands of upper-caste, influential individuals. His story, and that of families like Sujatha Bhat’s, challenge the silence of institutions. As exhumations continue and political pressure mounts, Karnataka’s investigators face the daunting task of unearthing not just remains, but truth long buried.
(With inputs from Express News Service)