A man “wracked with guilt” has come forward and given a chilling account of how he buried and disposed of hundreds of bodies of victims of sexual assault and murder in a holy town.
An Indian temple town has been caught in the eye of the storm after a whistleblower came forward and alleged the cover up of decades of rapes, torture, killings, and mass graves.
On July 3, a 48-year-old man came forward in the Indian state of Karnataka and claimed he was wracked with guilt over what he knew and had been forced to do.
Belonging to the Dalit community — one of the most marginalised groups in India — the man, whose identity is being withheld for his safety, emerged from hiding after almost 12 years to record his statement.
The man had reportedly worked at the highly revered, 800-year-old Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara temple in Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka, from 1995 to 2014, during which time he claimed he was forced by senior temple officials to dispose and bury hundreds of bodies — many of whom were women and girls showing clear signs of sexual assault. The whistleblower also claimed to have witnessed the murders of several destitute men.
In a six-page statement written in Kannada to the police chief of Dakshina Kannada district, the man said: “I am filing this complaint with an extremely heavy heart and to recover from an insurmountable sense of guilt… I can no longer bear the burden of memories of the murders I witnessed, the continuous death threats to bury the corpses I received, and the pain of beatings — that if I did not bury those corpses, I would be buried alongside them.”
In his complaint, which has been made public, the former cleaner told police he would name the temple officials involved in the crimes if protection for him and his family could be guaranteed.
Nearly two weeks after he filed his complaint with the police, the state government of Karnataka constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to look into the former employee’s allegations.
The temple at the heart of the claims has welcomed the probe into what happened.
In a satement, K Parshwanath Jain, a spokesperson for the Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Temple, said: “It is our sincere hope and earnest demand that the SIT conducts the highest level of investigation in this case and brings out the true facts to light.
“In light of our expectations, as well as that of the general public, for a fair and transparent investigation, it is understood that the State Government has transferred the case to a Special Investigation Team (SIT). Truth and belief are the strongest foundation for a society’s ethics and faith.”
Now, the excavation, exhumation, and forensic analysis of the alleged burial sites are underway — after the man reportedly identified at least 16 suspected burial sites from his time working at the temple, with human remains recovered from at least two of them, according to a pair of senior police officials closely associated with the investigations.
The former sanitation worker also claimed he had secretly exhumed a skeleton from one of the alleged burial locations in order to prove his claims and submitted the skeleton and its photographs to the police and court via his lawyers.
This is not the first time the town of Dharmasthala has been embroiled in allegations of this nature. Sporadic, yet repeated protests have been held — often led by local groups, political organisations, and families — regarding the discovery of bodies of rape and murder victims in and around the holy temple town, dating as far back as the 1980s.
Some of the demonstrations, such as one in 1987 protesting the rape and murder of 17-year-old Padmalata, as well as a massive 2012 movement called “Justice for Sowjanya”, have made national headlines. The cases remain unsolved to date.
The allegations
The unnamed man appeared at a local court in Belthangady on July 11 to record his official statement, draped in black clothing from head to toe with only a thin transparent strip covering his eyes.
“What began as regular employment later turned into work of covering up evidence of extremely horrific crimes,” he alleged.
In his complaint, the former Dharmasthala temple cleaner claimed he started noticing dead bodies appearing near the river at the start of his employment in 1995. Initially assuming they were victims of suicide or accidental drownings, he eventually started noticing a pattern.
His statement noted: “Many female corpses were found without clothes or undergarments. Some corpses showed clear signs of sexual assault and violence; injuries or strangulation marks indicating violence were visible on those bodies.”
Rather than reporting this to the authorities, the Dalit cleaner claims he was asked to “secretly dispose of these bodies” starting from 1998, and when he refused, he was beaten and forced by temple supervisors as they threatened, “we will cut you into pieces. Your body will also be buried like the other corpses. We will sacrifice all your family members.”
The man alleged the supervisors would call him to specific locations where there were dead bodies. He said: “Many times, these bodies were of minor girls. The absence of undergarments, torn clothes, and injuries to their private parts indicated brutal sexual assault on them. Some bodies also had acid burn marks.”
The unnamed complainant reportedly told the police and the court he was willing to identify the secret mass graves and would undergo any amount of tests, including polygraphs and brain-mapping. In the almost two decades he worked at the temple, the former cleaner said he “buried dead bodies in several locations throughout the Dharmasthala area”.
He also alleged at times he was asked to burn the dead bodies using diesel. He said in his complaint: “They would instruct me to burn them completely so that no trace would be found. The dead bodies disposed of in this manner numbered in the hundreds.”
In one particularly distressing 2010 case, the whistleblower claims he was ordered to bury the body of a girl aged between 12 to 15 years. “She was still wearing her school uniform shirt but other garments were missing. She had a school bag. Her body showed clear signs of sexual assault. There were strangulation marks on her neck. They instructed me to dig a pit and bury her along with her school bag. That scene remains disturbing to this day,” the former temple employee said in his testimony.
Another “disturbing incident” saw the man being forced to bury the body of a woman in her 20s. He said: “Her face had been burned with acid. That body was covered with a newspaper. Instead of burying her body, the supervisors instructed me to collect her footwear and all her belongings and burn them with her.”
Why he fled
The man claimed a girl from his own family was sexually harassed by a person who had links with the temple supervisors, which led the man to the realisation he and his family needed “to escape from there immediately”.
The man fled Dharmasthala with his family in December 2014, having worked there for almost two decades as “the mental torture I was experiencing had become unbearable”. They informed no one of their whereabouts. Since then, the family has been hiding out in different locations and residences in a neighbouring state.
The ex-temple employee said: “However, I am still living under the burden of guilt that does not subside. But my conscience no longer allows me to continue this silence.”
The case has taken India by storm as investigations into the horrific claims are still underway.