In a fresh development in the case of secret burials in Dharmasthala, a 60-year-old Bengaluru woman on Tuesday submitted a petition requesting the police to find the “skeletal remains” of her daughter who has been missing since 2003, when she allegedly went to the temple town in Karnataka with her friends.
The complainant submitted the petition to the Dakshina Kannada SP and the Dharmasthala station house officer, blaming influential people for the disappearance of her daughter, who she said was a first-year MBBS student at Manipal Medical College then.
The petition stated that a classmate reported by calling her landline number that her daughter had gone missing at the Dharmasthala temple. When contacted, she was informed by the authorities in her daughter’s hostel that she had not been seen for two to three days. The woman then travelled from Kolkata to Dharmasthala, where inquiries were made among the temple staff and locals about her daughter. The locals told her that three days earlier, they had seen temple staff taking away a young woman and the description of that woman matched the photograph of her daughter that was shown to them, she wrote in her complaint.
However, when she approached the Belthangady police station, the offices and staff there refused to accept her complaint and allegedly forced her out of the station.
The complainant refers to a BJP MP in her complaint and adds that she had met him after the incident. After hearing the woman’s account of her daughter’s disappearance, both the MP and his brother allegedly abused and turned her away. “It’s not our job to look after your daughter. Your daughter must have eloped with some boy. Why are you asking us? We have other work to do. Get out of here,” the woman was told, according to her complaint.
When she sat crying in front of the temple after meeting the two, she said in the complaint, four temple staff members wearing white clothes came to where she was sitting and took her to a room near the temple. She was then threatened to forget about her daughter and leave the place.
“You must not tell anyone about our people beating you. Don’t sit here in front of the temple and create a scene like this. If you don’t leave, your life will be in danger,” the four unknown people told her, according to the complaint.
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When she refused to leave without seeing her daughter, the four people allegedly tied her to a chair, gagged her mouth and later hit her hard on the head.
“After that, I was in a coma for three months, and when I regained consciousness, I was admitted and received treatment at Agadi Hospital in Wilson Garden, Bangalore. I don’t know how I got there or who brought me from Dharmasthala. My bag, identity card, bank passbook, and vanity bag that were with me were all missing. I have a wound on my head requiring eight stitches from the severe blow. Having lost my daughter without any trace, I have been living a discouraged life in fear for many years,” she said in her complaint.
The woman also demanded the BJP MP and his brother be arrested and subjected to polygraph tests to “make them reveal what happened to my daughter”.
Referring to the Dharmasthala whistleblower’s claims that he secretly buried sexual assault victims between 1998 and 2004, the woman contends in her police complaint that “there is a possibility that this person may have buried my daughter as well”.
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Locating her remains is essential to perform the final rites of her daughter, the woman said, adding that he would name other suspects in the case before a judge.