Sanctified Silence

The recent revelations from Dharmasthala in Karnataka are deeply unsettling, not only because of the brutality they suggest but because of the deafening silence that allowed such atrocities to remain hidden for nearly two decades. On July 11, a former sanitation worker appeared before a magistrate and narrated an account that could rival the darkest of dystopian fictions. He claimed that from 1998 to 2014, he was coerced into burning and burying the bodies of women; many of them young girls in school uniforms, under threat and duress. He described acid burns, strangulation marks, and naked corpses. He spoke of threats to his life, of suppression, and a deeply institutionalised apparatus of fear and silence.

The setting of these crimes makes the revelations all the more disturbing. Dharmasthala is not just a town; it is a symbolic space, revered as a holy site, home to the influential Dharmadhikari and a temple that commands both religious authority and political reverence. Yet, just beneath the sanctified soil, the witness alleges, lie the remains of victims whose identities, sufferings, and deaths were denied justice. These are not unsubstantiated accusations alone. They arrive in the wake of a growing list of documented tragedies. The 2012 rape and murder of 17-year-old Sowjanya, the mysterious disappearance of an 18-year-old MBBS student, Ananya Bhat, in 2003, and over 460 reported unnatural deaths over a decade in and around the temple premises all suggest a long and unbroken chain of unanswered questions.

The Sowjanya case, long heralded as a test of Karnataka’s criminal justice system, ended in 2023 with the acquittal of the only accused, despite significant public pressure and widespread belief that the real perpetrators remained protected. That very case has become a symbol of how deeply social hierarchy, institutional complicity, and political influence can obstruct justice.

The state’s response so far has been disturbingly sluggish and inadequate, especially given the gravity of the allegations. The sanitation worker, who handed over skeletal remains to the police, returned to court under Section 183 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) to record a formal statement—equivalent to Section 164 of the CrPC—after being belatedly granted witness protection under the 2018 Witness Protection Scheme. Yet, even weeks after the filing of the FIR, the police have failed to initiate any exhumation of the alleged mass graves, conduct forensic mapping of the burial sites, or begin DNA profiling of the remains. There has been no mahazar or site inspection, despite the complainant offering to lead investigators to the graves. Instead of immediate forensic action, the authorities have merely sought court permission for procedures like brain mapping and narco-analysis, raising fears that the investigation is being deliberately delayed, discredited, or derailed.

Further, the police themselves have been accused of attempting to pre-emptively exhume potential burial sites without due transparency or safeguards. There are even insinuations that the whistleblower might abscond—an allegation sharply countered by the complainant’s lawyers, who argue that the state machinery is attempting to discredit the witness and stall the investigation. The recent arrest of a YouTuber for uploading an AI-generated video about “mass graves” shall be legally justified, but it also raises questions about where the state’s investigative energies are truly focused: on containing public unrest or uncovering criminal realities.

If the allegations are true, and there is mounting circumstantial evidence that they may be, then Karnataka is staring at one of the gravest human rights catastrophes in recent memory. It is also a test case for how institutions deal with crimes committed in the shadow of religious power. The Karnataka State Women’s Commission has rightly called for a Special Investigation Team (SIT) with full authority to probe all disappearances, sexual assaults, and unnatural deaths in the Dharmasthala region over the past two decades.

The response to these developments cannot be piecemeal or symbolic. The investigation must be legally supervised and documented with full scientific rigour. Any interference, tampering, or leak of privileged information should be dealt with swiftly and decisively. Witness protection must move beyond statements to concrete steps such as relocation, 24/7 surveillance, and physical protection, especially since the complainant has openly stated that he lives in fear of being murdered.

This moment in Karnataka’s history cannot afford to repeat the tragic inertia that followed similar events elsewhere. India’s history of mass atrocities, be it the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms or the Gujarat riots of 2002, has shown that when state institutions delay, deny, or downplay, the result is not just the burial of evidence but the erosion of public trust. Delayed justice is compromised justice, and compromised justice is no justice at all.

Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. That means opening up decades of burial and death records, issuing public appeals for families of missing persons to come forward, and using DNA evidence to identify victims. It means revisiting and potentially reopening cases that have been declared closed for years, ensuring accountability not just in the case of the foot soldiers of these crimes but for anyone, regardless of title or influence, who facilitated, ordered, or covered them up.

In the coming days and weeks, as the news cycle moves on, as political equations shift, the risk is that these revelations will once again be buried, metaphorically if not literally. It is up to civil society, the media, and independent institutions to ensure that it does not happen. If the graves in Dharmasthala are not opened with honesty and courage, they will continue to haunt our republic.

The test is clear: Karnataka must choose between complicity and courage, between silence and scrutiny. The victims can no longer speak. But their bones, if unearthed, might finally tell the story that too many have worked too hard to suppress. For their sake, and the future of justice in India, we must listen. And we must act.

The writer is an author, political analyst, and columnist. Views expressed are personal