Karnataka police have registered yet another First Information Report (FIR) against rape-accused Lingayat seer Shivamurthy Murugha Sharanaru, this time for illegal custody of abandoned children. The FIR was registered against Shivamurthy, the head of a prominent Chitradurga mutt, and three others based on a complaint filed by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) on Tuesday, October 18. He is under judicial custody till Friday, October 21, following his arrest in another case of sexual assault of two minor girls, aged 15 and 16, residing in the residential quarters of the mutt.
CWC members had visited the hostel run by the mutt after the initial FIR was registered against Shivamurthy. On the CWC's orders, district child protection unit officer P Lokeshwarappa filed a complaint amid claims that the orphanage had broken rules by illegally keeping abandoned children.
During their visit, the committee members found two girls whose information was missing from the registers. Chitradurga’s Superintendent of Police told TNM, “CWC members found that two girls, one aged four and a half years and another 17, were not registered at the special adoption center that is run by the mutt.” He added that the police registered a case against Shivamurthy, mutt secretary Paramashivayya, warden Rashmi and in-charge Veena, under sections 33 (adoption) and 34 (foster care) of the Juvenile Justice Act.
This comes a week after Karnataka police registered a third rape complaint against Shivamurthy after a 12-year-old girl had filed a complaint alleging that she was sexually assaulted by him. The 12-year-old girl and her mother had lodged a complaint against the seer with the Mysuru police. She said that Shivamurthy sexually assaulted her for two years at the hostel run by the Murugha mutt. The girl alleged in her complaint that the seer had sexually assaulted two other girls.
In August, two girls filed a complaint against Shivamurthy for sexually assaulting them for years. In the complaint, they said that one of them had been sexually assaulted for one-and-a-half years and the other for three-and-a-half years. They also mentioned that 11 others were sexually assaulted by Shivamurthy. Along with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, he was also charged under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act as one of the survivors is from a Dalit community.