Continuing its probe into the alleged secret burials at Dharmasthala, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Wednesday questioned one of the complainants in the case, Sujatha Bhat, who claimed that her daughter had gone missing at the temple town in 2003.
The SIT questioned Sujatha Bhat for the second day in a row. On August 22, she told a YouTube channel that the claim about her daughter going missing was a fabricated one, only to flip-flop hours later, saying that she had been forced to make the statement by a lawyer.
The woman filed a complaint on July 11 with the Dakshina Kannada police, requesting them to find the skeletal remains of her daughter.
This came days after a whistleblower, now identified as C N Chinnaiah, alleged that he had been forced to bury several bodies around Dharmasthala between 1998 and 2014 and was warned against approaching the police.
After two weeks of excavations, the SIT recovered the remains of two skeletons. On August 23, Chinnaiah was arrested for allegedly giving false information and was remanded to judicial custody for 10 days. The SIT searched the house of Mahesh Shetty Thimarody, the right-wing activist behind the Justice for Sowjanya movement, on Tuesday in connection with the Dharmasthala case.
Commenting on the developments, another activist involved in the case, Girish Mattannavar, said in a video message that Chinnaiah had failed to identify all locations due to fear. “Someone has misled him,” he said. On the controversy over Chinnaiah staying at Shetty’s house before his arrest, he said that the whistleblower had voluntarily decided to stay there.
The Opposition BJP accuses the Congress Government of being part of a conspiracy to defame Dharmasthala. The party has scheduled a massive rally in the temple town for September 1, demanding a probe by the National Investigation Agency in the case.