They buried her like dog: New testimonies in Dharmasthala mass burial case

Shocking revelations in Karnataka’s Belthangady have reignited public outrage over alleged mass burials, following India Today’s exclusive report on the systematic deletion of police records. Right to Information (RTI) documents accessed by India Today show that Belthangady police deleted all entries from the Unnatural Death Register (UDR) between 2000 and 2015, a period that coincides with multiple allegations of unreported and suspicious deaths.

Now, RTI activist Jayanth has filed a formal complaint with the Special Investigation Team (SIT), claiming to have witnessed the illegal burial of a young girl’s body. He alleges that legal protocols were blatantly violated and that several officials were present at the time. The SIT is expected to register an FIR and begin exhumation proceedings soon.

Jayanth, who has long used RTI to probe police conduct, said he had earlier requested missing persons data and photographs from the Belthangady Police Station. The police response was chilling: they claimed all such documents, postmortem reports, wall posters, notices, and photographs used to trace unidentified bodies, had been destroyed under "routine administrative orders."

Jayanth said, "On August 2, I filed a complaint with the SIT. This complaint is based on an incident I personally witnessed. I named everyone who was present at that time, including officers. When the girl’s body was found, all legal procedures were violated. They buried the body like one would bury a dog. That sight has haunted me for years. Two years ago, I had said I would reveal the truth if honest officers ever took over the investigation. Now that moment has come, so I’ve filed this complaint. No one is behind me or influencing me to do this."

"As an RTI activist, I had filed a requisition at the Belthangady Police Station asking for records of all missing persons complaints along with photographs. But in their reply, police claimed that the missing complaint records were destroyed. In today’s digital age, how can such data be destroyed without digitising it first?"

He added, "If skeletal remains are found, how will the government match them to anyone when they’ve destroyed the relevant documents? Who are the people behind this? Who is influencing and covering this up? When there are computerised backups, how can they claim to have destroyed everything without backing it up? All of this must be investigated thoroughly."

The Belthangady Police in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district have come under sharp criticism after admitting to destroying key records of unidentified death cases registered between 2000 and 2015, a timeframe that overlaps almost entirely with the period during which a whistleblower has alleged mass burials took place in Dharmasthala, a temple town located within the same taluk.

The fresh complaintIn response to a Right to Information (RTI) application, the police stated that postmortem reports, wall posters, notices, and photographs used in efforts to trace the identity of deceased individuals had been destroyed in accordance with routine administrative orders.

The erasure of these records has triggered deep concern, as the whistleblower claims that between 1998 and 2014, he was forced to bury and cremate the bodies of women and minors, many of whom, he alleges, bore signs of sexual assault.

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