MANGALURU: A 60-year-old mother on Tuesday lodged a complaint with Dharmasthala police seeking help in locating the skeletal remains of her daughter, Ananya Bhat, who went missing under mysterious circumstances at Dharmasthala in 2003.
The plea comes in the wake of recent revelations by a former sanitation worker, who claimed to have buried multiple bodies in Dharmasthala.
Sujatha Bhat, a resident of Padmanabhanagar in Bengaluru and a retired stenographer from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), in her complaint recounted the events leading up to her daughter's disappearance.
In 2003, her daughter Ananya, a first-year MBBS student at Manipal Medical College, had travelled with friends to the Dharmasthala temple.
Sujatha received a distressing call from Ananya's classmate, Rashmi, informing her that Ananya had gone missing during the visit.
When Sujatha contacted the college hostel, she was told Ananya hadn't been seen for two to three days. Rushing from Kolkata to Dharmasthala, Sujatha began a desperate search, showing her daughter's photograph to locals and temple staff. Several locals reportedly told her they had seen temple staff escorting a young woman matching Ananya's description just days earlier.
However, Sujatha's attempt to lodge a formal complaint at Belthangady Police Station was met with hostility. "The officers refused to register my complaint and accused my daughter of eloping," she said, adding that she was verbally abused and driven out of the station.
Sujatha then approached Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari, Dr. D. Veerendra Heggade, but it yielded no help. Later that night, while sitting outside the temple in despair, she was approached by some men dressed in white, claiming to have information. Instead, they allegedly abducted her, tied her up, gagged her, and held her overnight in a dark room near the temple.
"They threatened me to stay silent, assaulted me, and eventually hit me on the head," she said.
Sujatha remained in a coma for three months and later found herself in a hospital in Bengaluru, with no memory of how she got there. Her belongings, including ID, bank documents, and personal effects, were missing. She bears a head wound from that attack, which required eight stitches.
Now, after the sanitation worker's shocking confession-reportedly including the recovery of a human skull-Sujatha believes her daughter may be one of the victims.
As a devout Hindu Brahmin, she expressed deep anguish at being unable to perform her daughter's final rites. "I plead with the authorities to help me recover Ananya's remains so I can conduct her funeral rites with dignity. If needed, I am willing to undergo a polygraph test," Sujatha said.
