Trigger warning: Mention of sexual violence
A Dalit man who was a former sanitation worker employed with the Manjunatha temple in Dharmasthala, Dakshina Kannada district, has alleged he was forced to bury the bodies of rape and murder victims for nearly two decades. The police have registered a case and said they will investigate the complaint, which includes a request to exhume the remains and a plea for witness protection.
The complaint, filed at the Dharmasthala police station on July 3, alleged that the incidents occurred between 1995 and 2014, when the man was employed by the Dharmasthala temple administration. He alleged that he was regularly directed to bury bodies, many of them women and minors who showed signs of sexual assault, and that he was threatened with death if he refused.
Dharmasthala, located in Dakshina Kannada district, is one of Karnataka’s most prominent pilgrimage towns. The Dharmasthala temple, dedicated to Lord Manjunatha, draws lakhs of devotees annually and is run by a powerful trust headed by the Heggade family, who have traditionally held immense religious, social and political influence in the region.
“I was born into what is considered the lowest caste. I worked as a sanitation worker under the Dharmasthala temple from 1995 to December 2014,” he said in the complaint. He said his duties began as routine cleaning near the Netravati river which is close to the temple, but later turned into what he described as the “covering up [of] evidence of the most horrific crimes.”
“I cannot bear the burden of the painful memory of the murders I witnessed and the beatings I received if I did not bury them,” the complainant wrote. “I hereby request that the information I am disclosing about the many murdered men and the many young women and girls who were raped and murdered be investigated urgently.”
The complainant, said he initially believed the bodies were suicides or accidents near the Netravati river. Over time, however, he alleged that several of the bodies bore clear signs of rape and violence. “Many of the female bodies were found without clothes or underwear. Some of the bodies bore clear signs of sexual assault and violence. The bodies bore injuries or strangulation that indicated violence,” he wrote.
He alleged that when he first refused to dispose of a body without informing the police, he was beaten. “They threatened saying, ‘We will cut you into pieces,’ ‘Your body will be buried like the rest,’ and ‘We will kill your entire family,’” he wrote.
The complaint details several specific cases, including that of a schoolgirl whose body he claims he was ordered to bury in 2010. “The supervisors sent me to a place about 500 meters from a petrol pump. There I found the body of a teenage girl. She was probably between 12 and 15 years old. She was wearing a school uniform shirt. Her body bore clear signs of sexual assault,” he wrote.
He also described being asked to dispose of the body of a woman whose face had been burned with acid, and several instances where poor men were allegedly killed by suffocation and buried in forested areas. “These murders took place in my presence,” he said. “I was instructed to bury these bodies in remote forest areas.”
The man said he fled Dharmasthala in December 2014 after a girl in his family was sexually assaulted by a person he claims had links to his supervisors. Since then, he says he has been living in hiding in a neighbouring state, frequently changing homes. “Even though we were far from Dharmasthala, the certainty that my family and I would be murdered at any moment… haunted us daily.”
He said he recently returned in secret and exhumed one of the bodies he had buried years ago. “I am submitting a photograph of this body and the body itself with this complaint,” he wrote. “I am ready to show the places where the dead bodies were buried in the Dharmasthala area… I am ready to exhume the remains in the presence of the police.”
While the complainant says that members of the temple administration and staff were those who allegedly ordered the burials and issued threats, the complainant did not include specific names in his complaint. “Some of the persons I will name are very influential and have a tendency to eliminate those who oppose them,” he wrote. He said he is willing to reveal the names once he and his family are granted protection under the Witness Protection Scheme, 2018.
Dakshina Kannada police have registered an FIR on July 4 under Section 211(a) (Omission to give notice or information to a public servant by a person legally bound to give it) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, after obtaining court permission. In a statement, police said they will investigate the complaint in accordance with the law.
“I am filing this complaint with full knowledge of the consequences of submitting false information,” the man concluded. “I confirm that the above is true to the best of my knowledge and belief. I am willing to undergo a polygraph or any other test to establish the truth.”
He also requested that the buried bodies be exhumed and given proper last rites. “I believe that if the bodies that are now being exhumed are given a proper last rites, the souls of those who have suffered will find peace and my sense of guilt will also be reduced,” he wrote.