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India Today
5 days ago
- Politics
- India Today
Dharmasthala mass-burial case: 5 big questions that raise a stink
Charges of a chilling rape-murder and mass burials have rocked the serene temple town of Dharmasthala in Karnataka. Allegations by a sanitation worker-turned-whistleblower — that he was forced to bury and cremate hundreds of bodies, mostly of women and minors, many showing signs of sexual assault and violence between 1998 and 2014 — have shaken society. The outcry from activists and lawyers has only grown louder, prompting the Karnataka government to order a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the charges of mass burials, in which members of the Dharmasthala temple administration were allegedly whistleblower's complaint to the Dharmasthala police on July 3 sparked public outrage and revived memories of the unresolved 2012 Sowjanya rape-murder case — where, despite years of investigations, court battles, and public outcry, justice was never served. The perpetrator of the crime remains unknown, and the lone accused was eventually the whistleblower's fresh complaint and growing demands for a thorough investigation, including by the Karnataka Women's Commission, the Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka government formed an SIT on July 20, to probe the allegations of mass burials, sexual violence, and systematic cover-ups. However, the BJP, while backing the SIT probe, has alleged a conspiracy."There is no wrongdoing in Dharmasthala. If a SIT wants to investigate, let it be done. There is no problem with that,' said former CM and BJP leader BS Yediyurappa."The state government has formed an SIT, the investigation has to happen at the earliest... We are also aware of the conspiracies behind it [the allegations]. If any attempts are made to destroy the system there keeping this issue, we will think about what to do further," said Karnataka BJP President BY Vijayendra, according to a PTI despite the formation of the SIT and growing public pressure, several critical questions remain unanswered, casting doubt on the renewed allegations, the families' responses, the course of investigations, and the handling of this long-simmering are five key questions that demand clarity.1. HOW HUNDREDS OF BURIALS AND CREMATIONS REMAINED SECRET?The whistleblower claimed hundreds of bodies were buried or burned in secret, often near the Netravathi River, over nearly two town's importance, visited by thousands of pilgrims daily, and frequented by politicians and celebrities, raises scepticism about how such large-scale operations went whistleblower alleged that bodies were disposed of in locations chosen for quick decomposition, but the lack of prior reports or suspicions in a tightly-knit community is of the whistleblower have argued that systemic failures in local law enforcement may have enabled the alleged secrecy, with allegations of police inaction when families reported missing persons. The SIT must investigate how such alleged crimes evaded scrutiny in the high-profile spiritual centre.2. WHY AREN'T MORE FAMILIES OF VICTIMS COMING FORWARD?advertisementThe whistleblower's claim of hundreds of victims suggests a staggering number of families affected. Yet only Sujatha Bhat, whose daughter Ananya disappeared in 2003, has filed complaints since the allegations surfaced earlier this absence of reports from families raises questions about the scale of the claims or potential fear of Karnataka State Commission for Women has noted a history of inadequate police response to missing persons cases, which may have discouraged families of potential SIT's mandate includes probing disappearances, but the lack of proactive family testimonies remains a critical gap and may hurt the investigation.3. WHY DID THE WHISTLEBLOWER EMERGE AFTER A DECADE OF SILENCE?The whistleblower, a former sanitation worker at the Dharmasthala, claimed he fled the town in 2014 after years of threats and trauma, particularly following the alleged assault on a family sudden reappearance now, after a decade in hiding in a neighbouring state, has sparked curiosity as to why now?The whistleblower, in his complaint, cited guilt and a desire for justice for the dead for his appearance. Reports said that along with the complaint, he attached images of skeletal remains he exhumed for his prolonged silence raises questions about his motivations or external influences. The SIT will ovboiusly verify his claims and assess why he chose this moment to come forward after a decade-long silence.4. WHY DIDN'T THESE CLAIMS SURFACE DURING THE 2012-13 SOWJANYA PROTESTS?The 2012 rape and murder of 17-year-old Sowjanya in Dharmasthala, and the State's response, triggered massive protests and allegations of police inaction and interference by influential the whistleblower's claims of mass burials of hundreds did not emerge during that period when the case was rape-murder was also probed by the absence of claims is striking, given the public outrage and demands for justice over a decade ago. The SIT must explore whether systemic cover-ups or fear suppressed such revelations or if the whistleblower's claims lack historical advocates from Karnataka have urged the government to establish a dedicated helpline for victims' families. This might help the families of the alleged victims to come WHY HAVEN'T POLICE BEGUN EXHUMING ALLEGED BODIES?Despite the SIT's formation on July 20, and the whistleblower's offer to identify burial sites, no exhumations have been reported as of police have sought court permission to conduct tests like brain mapping and narco-analysis on the whistleblower, but said that excavating the alleged burial sites would be done at the appropriate time, even though such a step could clearly establish whether the whistleblower's claims hold water or not. And if his claims on the scale of the crime are has raised concerns about the investigation's pace and intent, given that previous probes have been alleged to be superficial, delayed, or influenced by powerful of the whistleblower have flagged potential leaks of the whistleblower's statements, which amplify the possible tampering risks. The SIT must act swiftly to verify the physical evidence and address public scepticism about the investigation's integrity, as that's the only way the allegations can be put to the SIT will be probing the allegations, the nation is awaiting answers to the pressing questions, which will determine whether justice is served or if investigations in Dharmasthala reach a dead end like it did in the Sowjanya rape-murder case.- Ends advertisement
The Hindu
6 days ago
- The Hindu
Micro regional cuisine of Uttar Andhra
As Indians, it has taken us a fair bit of time to acknowledge something crucial about our own cuisine — its variety. For the longest time, Indian food, particularly abroad, has been reduced to tikkas, chicken makhani and the like. But scratch the surface and it becomes clear just how dramatically things change from one region to the next. Having lived in South India for over two decades, I have come to appreciate just how diverse Telugu cuisine (spanning Telangana and Andhra Pradesh) is, varying not just between states but from district to district. It was Sowjanya Narsipuram, a home chef from Srikakulam who documents the food of her region , recently introduced me to the cuisine of Uttar Andhra, or North Andhra . At first, I assumed it was just another clever rebranding of the familiar; perhaps a new spin to market something old. I was wrong. The 'new' was not in the invention, but in the discovery. Sowjanya focuses on the culinary traditions of Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam, and I could not help but wonder— how different could the food really be? As it turns out, quite a lot. 'It's all in the ingredients,' Sowjanya explained, patiently answering each of my doubts. 'There's extensive use of pulses and beans. And in some dishes, it's the garnish — a sprinkling of mustard powder — that makes the flavours pop.' Sowjanya's culinary journey began with a sense of nostalgia — a desire to keep the food of her grandmother and mother alive. While she first relied on memory to recreate beloved dishes, she soon realised that was not enough. Driven by curiosity and a deepening connection to her roots, she began learning directly from her mother and aunts, steadily immersing herself in the food culture of Uttar Andhra. 'The cuisine of this region isn't about overwhelming spice,' she explained. 'It's flavourful, yes, but the aroma doesn't always come from dry whole spices. It often comes from the core ingredient itself.' She offers the junugulu boorelu as a case in point. At first glance, it resembles the more familiar poornam boorelu — deep-fried dumplings stuffed with sweet lentil filling. But take a bite, and you will know it is different. Here, the filling is made from cooked red beans (locally known as junugulu), which are ground into a coarse paste, mixed with jaggery and freshly grated coconut, then dipped in rice flour batter and deep-fried. 'And no,' she added with a smile, 'Junugulu has nothing to do with pungulu (mini idli-batter fried dumplings) ). The names may rhyme, but the dishes are poles apart.' During our meal, Sowjanya laid out an impressive spread. There was aavapindi pulihora, a mustard and lemon-flavoured rice tempered with red chillies; oodala talimpu, barnyard millet sautéed in ghee with chillies and curry leaves; and minumala pacchadi, a coarse, spicy chutney made from black urad dal. Next came the curries: jeedipappu kobbari paala koora, a delicately spiced dish of tender cashews cooked in fresh coconut milk, and matki pappu, which was entirely new to me, but a comforting moth dal cooked with fenugreek leaves, a delicacy hailing from the tribal regions of Vizianagaram. Guna chaaru reminded me faintly of dappalam, but with a twist — it was made from semi-ripe jackfruit and moringa leaves, balanced with tamarind and jaggery. To finish, there was kala bhatti paramannam, a rice dessert made using desi black rice, coconut and jaggery, delicately perfumed with edible camphor and cardamom. Notably, the dessert contained no dairy at all, a nod to the plant-based richness of traditional sweets from the region. Sowjanya was the Culinary Lounge as part of Onamaalu.
Hans India
6 days ago
- Hans India
Social media-fuelled protest escalates into public scuffle
Mangaluru: Tensions ran high in Dharmasthala when a group of foot-marchers led by Bengaluru-based Sharana Basappa Kabja arrived near the Mahadwara of the revered temple, demanding justice in the long-pending Sowjanya rape and murder case. Holding placards and raising slogans, the group was intercepted by angry local residents who accused them of attempting to defame the temple and its Dharmadhikari. A verbal altercation ensued, escalating briefly into a scuffle. Police arrived on the scene and took the protesters to the local police station, preventing further escalation. The group was later asked to leave the premises. Residents alleged the group had recently circulated disparaging remarks about Dharmasthala and its head on social media, provoking resentment. 'You're misusing a tragedy for personal publicity and targeting an institution that has supported thousands,' said one local. The protesters, however, claimed they were merely seeking justice and were denied entry for darshan. 'We are being suppressed for raising our voice,' Kabja told the media. Police confirmed that no arrests were made and the situation was brought under control without incident.
India Today
6 days ago
- Politics
- India Today
Sowjanya rape-murder: Case that first sparked Dharmasthala outrage 13 years ago
"Sowjanya's power has turned divine. The power of a minor who was brutally raped and murdered is now exposing the horrors that have happened in Dharmasthala", former RSS and Hindu Jagarana Vedike activist Mahesh Shetty Timarody told India Today Digital. Timarody is seeking justice for the alleged victims of Dharmasthala, and his remarks came even as a Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigates the allegations of young women being sexually assaulted and murdered and being buried in different parts of the popular temple town in SIT was formed after a whistleblower, who claims to be a former sanitation worker employed by the temple trust, alleged that he was forced over the years to burn and bury the bodies of women, including students, who were raped and murdered. Several activists, lawyers, and the state commission for women also demanded a thorough investigation. Some of the alleged perpetrators of the crime are related to the temple trust, they sanitation worker appeared in court under heavy police protection, his body wrapped from head to toe with only a transparent strip over the eyes to help him navigate. He had come to testify about the allegations he made, claiming he was forced to dispose of over a hundred murder victims, many of them women who, he alleged, were sexually assaulted, between 1998 and 2014. Before the current claims brought Dharmasthala to national headlines, the first case that sparked massive protests in the temple town was the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl, Sowjanya, in even after over a decade and massive protests, no one has been held guilty of Sowjanya's rape and a pre-university student studying at Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College in used to live with her now-dead father, Chandappa Gowda, and mother Kusumavathi in Ujire of Dharmasthala was a middle-class family, with the father working as a contractor for the Public Works Department (PWD) in Belthangady for several years, and the mother a RAPE-MURDER CASE: WHAT HAPPENED IN 2012On October 09, 2012, in the evening, around 7.00 pm, the family of Sowjanya started worrying. Their daughter had not returned from college. The family started searching for Sowjanya, and a group of villagers also gathered to accompany them. It was raining extensively that family claims that their daughter went missing while returning from an interview with a Mangalore-based YouTube channel, Kudla Rampage, Sowjanya's mother recounted, "Sowjanya had gone to college without having any food in the morning. It was an auspicious day of Hosa Akki (the day when families have new rice). My daughter had told me I'll come and have my lunch later. I couldn't even see her last time as I was busy with the daily chores inside the kitchen."advertisementSowjanya was last spotted alighting from the government bus near the Netravati river bank around 4.00-4.15 pm, according to her maternal uncle Vittal Gowda and other locals."When Sowjanya didn't return home, I anxiously called my brother (Vittal Gowda) at 7.00 pm and asked him that did he had by any chance seen Soujanya, and she even wished him in the evening," said her searching for the missing Sowjanya in every possible place, her father filed a missing complaint at the local police station late at night. Sowjanya's family had to file the case at the Belthangady police station, which is 15 km away from even after being a very popular temple town of Karnataka with thousands of devotees visiting every day, had no police station in the town. It was after this case that a police station was set up by the Karnataka state government under pressure in family and the police found Sowjanya's body the following day inside a forest located across a gushing stream near Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheswara Yoga and Nature Cure Hospital at Mannasanka. Sowjanya's clothes were torn, and her undergarments were missing, according to news spread like wildfire in the village, sparking massive police initiated an investigation to identify the perpetrator of the October 12, 2012, Mallik Jain, Ashrith Jain, Ravi Poojary, Shivappa Malekudiya, and Gopalkrishna Gowda, all working under Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Temple Trust, run by D Veerendra Heggade, caught a person named Santhosh Rao from the Bahubali entry point near the person, Santhosh Rao, was beaten by the public before being handed over to the police. According to the police reports, Santhosh was spotted in the area four days before the crime. Reports suggested he might have been suffering from depression or other psychiatric was from Karkala town in Karnataka's Udupi District. He worked in a hotel in Karnataka's Chikkamagaluru. His father was a retired government teacher, and his mother was a retired employee of the local Belthangady Police initially investigated the Sowjanya case, and later the case was transferred to the Crime Investigation Department (CID) within a month by the then Home Minister R CID submitted a 15-page report to the state government and named Santhosh Rao as the prime accused, according to The New Indian Express. It also gave a clean chit to four accused whom Sowjanya's family had accused in the CID report sparked massive outrage and protests in Dakshina Kannada an intensive public outcry, the then Siddaramaiah Government in 2013 handed over this case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which officially started the investigation in March CBI probed the case, and after a long trial, the CBI special court in Bengaluru acquitted Santhosh Rao on June 16, 2023, due to lack of the verdict, the court cited the failure of the prosecution to prove Rao guilty, and also highlighted significant lapses in the initial stages of investigation and evidence the verdict of the CBI special court, protests erupted and activists launched the 'Justice for Sowjanya' campaign. The activists and the family of the victim demanded the case be reinvestigated. But in 2024, the Karnataka High Court rejected the plea for a fresh investigation and said, "no purpose will be served even if reinvestigation is permitted".advertisementDespite all these years and all the developments, the big question — If not Santhosh Rao, if not the four other accused, then who raped and killed Sowjanya — remains sister, in an interview, sobbed and said, "When I see my sister's friends today, happily married and having a family, I always remember my sister and think that if she were alive today, even she would have been in the same happy situation.""In remembrance of our daughter Sowjanya, we planted a sapling in the place where her body is buried. Today, the plant has grown, nature has done its duty, but the agencies that had to get us justice have failed," Sowjanya's mother father, Chandappa Gowda, passed away on January 19 this year after battling cancer. He fought to get justice for his daughter but died without any closure. Sowjanya's case erupted in 2012-13, and it is over a decade now that allegations that hundreds of women, raped and murdered, have been buried in Dharmasthala.- EndsTrending Reel
Indian Express
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Dharmasthala secret burials: women's panel writes to CM Siddaramaiah, whistleblower's advocates seek SIT probe led by ADGP Mohanty
Following claims of murders and secret burials that allegedly took place for over two decades in the temple town of Dharmasthala in Dakshina Kannada district, the Karnataka State Commission for Women has written to the state government seeking an impartial investigation into the allegations. The advocates of the whistleblower, whose police complaint brought to light the alleged murders and secret burials of sexual assault victims, have also written an open letter calling for the formation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) under ADGP Pronab Mohanty to 'unearth the truth and deliver justice in this profoundly disturbing case'. In a letter dated July 14, the commission's chairperson, Dr Nagalakshmi Choudhary, noted that the whistleblower had recorded a court statement that he had buried 'hundreds of bodies'. The commission has taken note of reports about the claims and a statement made by the family of a medical student who had gone missing at Dharmasthala. 'There are also allegations that police officials did not respond properly when families of victims went to file complaints about their missing children, or deaths. Therefore, a SIT should be formed under a senior IPS officer to investigate cases of missing women and students, unnatural death/murder cases and rape cases that took place around Dharmasthala in the last 20 years,' she said in a letter to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. The letter came days after the whistleblower recorded a statement at the jurisdictional court at Belthangady in the district. Earlier, he had filed a complaint with the police alleging that he was forced to bury several bodies that were found half-naked and had signs of sexual assault and rape near Dharmasthala. The whistleblower, who is a former sanitation worker employed at the temple town, has alleged that he was forced to bury several bodies from 1998 to 2014 and was threatened against approaching the police. He had claimed that the crimes might have been committed by those involved in the administration of the temple at Dharmasthala. On Tuesday, the advocates of the whistleblower–Ojaswi Gowda and Sachin Deshpande–issued an open letter stating that there was a 'widespread public demand' for an SIT to be formed immediately. 'However, the experience of the SIT constituted in 2012 for the Sowjanya case, which concluded in a disaster and deep public dissatisfaction, continues to unsettle this region to this day. This past dissatisfaction continues to unsettle this region to this day. This past experience, far from diminishing the need for an SIT, underscores the critical importance of getting it right this time,' they said. Referring to a recent judgment of the Karnataka High Court on a writ petition in an unrelated case, the advocates said the court had explicitly directed the formation of an SIT to be headed by senior IPS officer Pronab Mohanty for a complex investigation. 'A very large number of legal professionals have, therefore, strongly urged us to insist that Mr. Pranab Mohanty be appointed to lead the SIT in the Dharmasthala mass burials case. Furthermore, it is their collective insistence that the Investigating Officers (IOs) and other supervising personnel appointed to this SIT must also be individuals of unimpeachable integrity, and critically, that their appointments be recommended by To ensure transparency and accountability, there must be a publicly available paper trail demonstrating that the selection process for these key roles strictly followed this integrity protocol,' they said in the letter.
