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More than two decades after her daughter allegedly went missing under mysterious circumstances at the Dharmasthala temple, a 60-year-old woman has filed a police complaint seeking to recover her daughter’s skeletal remains to perform final rites in accordance with religious customs
According to Sujatha Bhat, her daughter Ananya, a first-year MBBS student at Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, had travelled to Dharmasthala with classmates when she disappeared.
Sujatha, who was then working as a stenographer with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Kolkata, stated she received a phone call from her daughter’s classmate informing her of the disappearance. When she contacted the college hostel, she was told Ananya had not been seen for two to three days.
Sujatha immediately travelled to Dharmasthala and began searching for her daughter. She states in her complaint that locals near the temple told her they had seen temple staff taking away a young woman who resembled Ananya. When she tried to file a missing person complaint at Belthangady Police Station, she alleges that police refused to register it and asked her to leave.
She further alleges that when she approached Dharmadhikari Veerendra Heggade and his brother Harshendra Kumar at their residence, they dismissed her.
In the complaint, Sujatha states that later that night, while she was sitting in front of the temple, four men dressed in white, whom she identifies as temple staff, approached her claiming they had information about Ananya. She alleges they physically assaulted her and she sustained a head injury.
She states that she later regained consciousness at Agadi Hospital in Wilson Garden, Bengaluru, after being in a coma. She claims her personal belongings, including her identification documents and bank passbook, went missing.
Sujatha says she has lived in fear for years, but recent reports in the media about a former sanitation worker in Dharmasthala claiming to have buried several bodies and handing over a human skull to the court, have led her to believe her daughter’s remains may also be buried in the area.
She has requested police help to locate her daughter's remains so that she can perform the final rites in keeping with her religious customs. She has also expressed her willingness to undergo a polygraph test and urged that Dr. Veerendra Heggade and Sri Harshendra Kumar also be subjected to one.
In her written appeal, she states: “Please find my daughter’s skeletal remains and allow me to perform the funeral rites with honor, give peace to Ananya’s soul, and let me spend my final days in peace.”