A Karnataka temple town in the grip of hysteria over rumours, skeletons | Bangalore News

These are locations identified by the sanitation worker – who was once employed at Dharmasthala — as spots where, between 1995 and 2014, he allegedly secretly buried bodies of victims of assaults and murders in the region. The burials, he alleged, were carried out at the behest of an influential family in the temple town.

While the first two days of the SIT investigation yielded little, on July 31, Day 3 of the exercise, parts of a human skeleton were collected from one of the spots.

“He has not mentioned the exact number of bodies he has buried. Even if his allegations are true, the police have to verify everything before going forward,” said Dakshina Kannada Superintendent of Police Dr K Arun who supervised the investigation before the SIT took over.

The discovery of these remains has given a fresh momentum to the allegations levelled by the sanitation worker. Amid rumours that his allegations might trigger more revelations came a complaint filed on July 15 by a 60-year-old woman, Sujatha Bhat, who earlier worked as a stenographer in the CBI. Bhat alleged that her daughter, a first-year medical student at a college in Manipal went missing at Dharmasthala in 2003, and that she wasn’t allowed to file an FIR then. She has now sought the finding of her daughter’s remains.

Dharmasthala’s identity as a religious town is closely linked to the authority of the Manjunatheshwara Temple administrators, who have over the last century assumed larger-than-life roles in the lives of the people, with their influence extending over everything from education to healthcare, rural development to women’s empowerment. (Express Photo)

A police complaint has not yet been registered in the case, with police still verifying Bhat’s allegations and claims, which also revolve around alleged loss of property in the region to the temple administration.

“Her request relies on the assumption that one of the bodies (claimed to have been buried by the sanitation worker), if exhumed, will turn out to be her daughter’s, which has to be verified by DNA testing,” said SP Arun.

Despite repeated requests made through her lawyer, Sujatha Bhat was unavailable for comments. Her lawyers cited health reasons for her withdrawal from public appearances — after an initial appearance to submit a complaint to the Dharmasthala police on July 15.

Dharmasthala Grama Panchayat vice president Srinivas Rao dismissed the sanitation worker’s allegations — that hundreds of bodies were buried in the forests surrounding the town — as “purely imaginary”.

“We are confident that the truth will come out,” he said, expressing confidence in the SIT formed by the state government.

He said the administration has had an arrangement with the gram panchayat since 1986-87 to dispose of unknown bodies. “This is done only with police clearances after a post-mortem is conducted. The body is buried by the Health Department or the Grama Panchayat,” Rao said.

On an average, 10-12 unclaimed bodies are buried annually in the region after following all procedures and conducting a panchnama. The administration is in the process of compiling the list of all bodies buried so that unverified claims can be put to rest, he said.

Between reverence and rumours

Dharmasthala, nestled in the foothills of the Western Ghats in Dakshina Kannada district, is home to the Sree Manjunatheshwara Temple. The temple has a special place in the lives of the people of Karnataka and has, over the years, emerged as one of Karnataka’s foremost religious destinations.

Dharmasthala’s identity as a religious town is closely linked to the authority of the temple administrators, who have over the last century assumed larger-than-life roles in the lives of the people, with their influence extending over everything from education to healthcare, rural development to women’s empowerment.

The Manjunatheshwara Temple is a Shiva temple administered by a Jain family with rituals conducted by Brahmin priests. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Sree Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Education Trust, a non-profit educational unit of the temple trust, for instance, runs 40 institutions — from schools and colleges to professional institutions.

Until the end of the 17th century, the region and the privately managed temple were under the control of feudal lords of the Sthanik Brahmin community before it shifted to the Jain Bunts during the Anglo-Mysore wars, making it a unique religious institution — a Shiva temple administered by a Jain family with rituals conducted by Brahmin priests.

Male heirs of the Pergade family, a Jain-Bunt community, have been chief administrators or the ‘Dharmadhikaris’ of the temple and town for 21 generations — starting with Varmanna Heggade to Veerendra Heggade, 76, a BJP-linked Rajya MP and a Padma Vibhushan awardee for social work, who has been dharmadhikari since 1968.

People have over the years deferred to the religious and feudal authority that governed their lives. Yet, rumours and murmurs of highhandedness by ‘powerful forces’ have floated in the temple town for decades.

The first public outrage occurred in the aftermath of the 2012 rape and murder of college student Sowjanya, 17. While Santosh Rao, a 34-year-old homeless man, was arrested in the case, a CBI investigation did not find evidence to nail anyone for the rape and murder of the 17-year-old student.

The CBI probe also revealed that key evidence in the case — such as vaginal swabs of the victim — was tampered. In its order of June 16, 2023, a special CBI court, while acquitting Santosh, the only accused in the case, recommended action against officials who allegedly botched up the investigation in the early stages.

Over two decades later, the memory of the crime and its injustice continues to linger in the town. With the recent allegations, Sowjanya’s family has called for the SIT probing the secret burials to revisit the rape and murder case. There are similar demands for revisiting other unresolved cases in the town – some going as far back as 1979 — despite legal resolutions to many of the matters.

Key members of the Nagarika Seva Trust, a resistance group which has emerged to challenge the authority of the temple administration, claims to have been followers of the Heggade family until they decided to cut ties following a murder in 1986.

The founders of the trust, K Somanath Nayak and Ranjan Rao Yerdoor, have been waging legal battles against alleged injustices in the town. Nayak spent three months in jail in 2021 after a Belthangady court held him guilty of violating an injunction and “indulging in malicious propaganda” against temple-run institutions and members of Heggade family.

Talk of the town

Even those critical of the administration of the temple and the town, however, consider the allegations as far-fetched and excessive.

“Earlier, no one dared talk against the town or the family of the Heggades,” says the editor of a newspaper in the region, referring to social media campaigns seeking the reopening of old cases that have followed the sanitation worker’s claims. However, he says, half-truths were being spread everywhere about the case and that truth was now indistinguishable from the lies. “Judgment on the case, it appears, is already passed (by the public) when the investigation is yet to begin,” he says.

Many residents of Dharmasthala are vehement in their defence of the temple authorities. There are also those who see the current controversy as a ploy by right-wing organisations to take control of the temple from the Jain family.

“Bodies being found around the forests of the town is not new,” says a resident of the temple town. “I have seen bodies of people who hanged themselves to death owing to the belief that they will achieve eternal bliss by dying at a religious place like Dharmasthala.”

Dismissing rumours against the temple administrators, he says, “You cannot find one family that has not benefited from the Dhani (benevolent landlord).”

Justifying an ex parte injunction granted by a Bengaluru court to “delete/de-index” 8,812 links across media platforms related to news coverage of the Dharmasthala secret burials, he says the campaign against the temple administration was “orchestrated” to defame the town and, by extension, the Heggade family.

While the first two days of the SIT investigation yielded little, on July 31, Day 3 of the exercise, parts of a human skeleton were collected from one of the spots. (Express Photo)

Seeking a decree for permanent prohibitory injunction, Veerendra Heggade’s brother Harshendra Kumar D had in a petition contended that “unknown persons or parties are cropping up and started to make allegations against the plaintiff, his elder brother and his family members, the temple and the institutions run by them” and “vested interested persons are continuing to make false, frivolous, baseless and vexatious video contents.”

In Kanyadi, a village that borders Dharmasthala, a resident says, “Ask us how many people have received subsidised education? How many couples were married, with the temple incurring all expenses? How many poor people are offered free or subsidised medicine in hospitals run under Shri Kshetra Dharmasthala?”

Those who swear by the family insist that the rumours have not diminished the aura of the temple or its dharmadhikari. “The relentless bombardment of fake news has affected the mental peace of many in the town. However, the number of devotees has not dwindled as devotees of Lord Manjunatha have trust in their deity and custodians of the temple,” says the gram panchayat president.

“This is a classic case where those who cannot tolerate the fame achieved by a person ultimately tries to besmirch him. You can either do better work than him or drag him down by incessant personal attacks. Lord Manjunatha does not spare such people,” says a resident of Dharmasthala.

SIT has an uphill task

The SIT constituted on July 19 faces an uphill task as they investigate the claims of secret burials of “hundreds” of people who were assaulted, rape or murdered over two decades ago.

To begin with, the SIT would have to trace the families of those who went missing in the region — like the daughter of Sujata Bhat — and then match DNAs with bodies that are claimed to have been buried by the former sanitation worker.

The discovery of these human remains have given a fresh momentum to the allegations levelled by the sanitation worker, who was once employed at Dharmasthala. (Express Photo)

The SIT would have to obtain oral accounts in cases where there have been no missing complaints lodged in the town and obtain DNA samples for matches with retrieved remains.

The SIT would also have to look at claims of land grabbing in the region where people have been forced off their lands by dominant players.

“We should know whether it (the alleged sexual assaults and murders) took place or not. If we drag this along, then it won’t be right according to the law either. Therefore, we have sought an investigation. I don’t know what will come out of it,” Karnataka’s home minister G Parameshwara said after the constitution of the Special Investigation Team.
“If the investigation fails to uncover something then we can say that there was no wrongdoing to the general public,” he said.