According to officials, Indian police have exhumed dead bodies in a temple in a town in the south of India. The exercise was part of an investigation into allegations that hundreds of murder and rape victims were secretly buried there from around the mid-1990s.
The investigation centers on Dharmasthala, home to an 800-year-old temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva in the Karnataka state, which has made national news.
A former temple cleaner told the police last month that he had been forced by superiors to dispose of hundreds of remains over the course of two decades, many of which were women and girls with evidence of sexual abuse. His allegations were filed in a police report dated July 4.
The former cleaner, whose identity is hidden by authorities for safety reasons, left Dharmasthala in 2014 but said he felt forced to speak up now due to lingering guilt.
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Parts of the report read, “If the skeletons now exhumed receive respectful funeral rites, those tormented souls will find peace, and my sense of guilt could also decrease.”
A temple spokesperson said the temple welcomed a thorough inquiry and hoped police would “bring out true facts to light.”
In the report, the former cleaner accused temple officials of pressuring him to dispose of the dead, threatening to name them if they protected him and his family. On Monday, Karnataka’s interior minister told the state parliament that the protection was now in place.
The man said he had secretly recovered a skeleton from one of the burial locations to back up his claims.
According to two senior police officers familiar with the case, a special investigation team constituted by the Karnataka government has retrieved human remains from two of 16 suspected burial sites. They requested to be anonymous due to the sensitivity of the situation.
Karnataka’s interior minister, Gangadharaiah Parameshwara, stated that the police have collected bone pieces, soil samples, and other testing materials from two sites as a result of the former cleaner’s information.
Parameshwara said, “The analysis is ongoing. Only once that is complete can we say the investigation has truly begun.” “My request is to not make this a religious matter.”
A lawyer for the complainant, Sachin Deshpande, told reporters, “They have found human remains where our client pointed, and we are sure that the truth will come out.”
The revelations have reignited interest in previously unresolved cases, including Padmalatha, a college student whose family claims she was raped and murdered in Dharmasthala in 1986.
According to the victim’s sister, Indravathi, the family buried Padmalatha’s body rather than cremating it in accordance with Hindu custom, believing that this would benefit future investigations.
She said, “We hope that we will get justice one day for her abduction, rape and murder.”
