Twist in Dharmasthala probe as whistleblower arrested for perjury
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A whistleblower, whose revelations had led to the formation of a Special Investigation Team to investigate allegations of illegal burials in Dharmasthala, was arrested on August 23 after he reportedly retracted his earlier allegations before a magistrate, which investigators said amounted to perjury and brought a dramatic turn in the ongoing probe.
The arrest took place on August 23, a day after the whistleblower had appeared before SIT chief Pranab Mohanty and recorded his statement, in which he maintained that most of the burials he carried out were legal following post-mortems, although he admitted that a few were not.
SIT sources pointed out that the inconsistency between his earlier deposition to a magistrate, in which he had described all burials as illegal, and his later statement amounted to misleading the court, The News Minute reported.
The whistleblower had already come under scrutiny on July 11 when he handed over skeletal remains of a body to the police, which he alleged were exhumed from Dharmasthala, whereas SIT sources suggested that the remains did not originate from the site and may have been sourced from a laboratory, leading to charges of creating false evidence.
His initial claims that he had been forced to bury multiple bodies of women and children who appeared to have been sexually assaulted had led to the large-scale SIT investigation earlier in July, yet excavation work at identified spots has so far yielded only a skeleton and a few bones, with soil samples now undergoing forensic analysis to determine if more human remains are buried in the area.
The arrest followed a day of confusion as another complainant in the case, Sujatha Bhat, made contradictory public statements, first claiming that her daughter had been murdered before revising her account to state that the victim was her friend’s child.
Meanwhile, political parties have intensified their support for Dharmadhikari Veerendra Heggade, with leaders of both Congress and the BJP holding marches and solidarity meetings, while Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar warned that any attempt to tarnish the temple’s image would be treated as a conspiracy and punished accordingly.