A Mangaluru court has reportedly granted bail to CS Chinnaiah, also known as Chinna, the whistleblower in the Dharmasthala case, on Monday, November 24. According to Vartha Bharti, the court approved his release under 12 conditions, one of which requires him to furnish a bond of ₹1 lakh.
Chinna, who had been in Shivamogga jail for the past three months, was released just as the Special Investigation Team is expected to submit its charge sheet before the Belthangady court.
He had been arrested on August 23 on allegations of perjury and fabricating evidence. The Dalit former sanitation worker had earlier recorded his statement before SIT chief Pranab Mohanty.
The Dharmasthala mass burial case first surfaced on July 3 after Chinna claimed he had been compelled to bury more than 100 bodies—some appearing to be women and girls who may have been sexually assaulted—in concealed graves between 1995 and 2014. He had also pointed out 13 locations along the Netravathi River where exhumations could be carried out.
Officials noted that Chinna’s claims set off the SIT investigation, leading the team to conduct excavations. According to sources involved in the probe, the searches have so far turned up a skeleton and a few human remains at two of the identified locations, Siasat Daily reported.
The Dharmasthala temple, which has been under the care of Rajya Sabha MP and Padma Bhushan awardee Veerendra Heggade since 1968, has added further prominence to the case. Because of the temple’s religious importance, the allegations triggered strong public reactions, with activists, women’s groups, and political leaders insisting on a thorough and unbiased inquiry.
One of the complainants, Sujatha Bhat — who earlier filed a controversial petition stating that her daughter, Ananya Bhatt, had disappeared in 2003 — later retracted her statement. She acknowledged to reporters that the girl had been a fabricated figure linked to a property dispute.
She also stated that she intended to visit Dharmasthala to publicly apologise and seek forgiveness before Lord Manjunatha and Shri Veerendra Heggade.