Comprehensive probe into Dharmasthala ‘burials’ case sought

Communist Party of India (Marxist) district secretary K. Neela has urged the State government to order a comprehensive probe into the alleged burials of bodies in Dharmasthala village.

Addressing presspersons here on Monday, Ms. Neela said that thorough investigation is essential to uncover the mystery of a series of alleged crimes reported since the 1970s wherein women and young girls are said to have been sexually harassed and brutally killed.

She urged the State government to conduct thorough re-investigation in the case of a school teacher identified as Vedavalli who was burnt alive in a bathroom for winning her promotion case in 1979 and in another case of 1986 wherein a girl named Padmalatha was kidnapped and the body retrieved from the Netravati, as her Communist father contested an election against an influential candidate.

She said that further investigation is required in the 2012 case of mahout Narayana Safalya and his sister Yamuna said to have been killed for refusing to give up their land and also, in the case of Soujanya said to have been raped and murdered. She said that eyewitnesses in most of these cases died under suspicious circumstances.

And, now, a former sanitation worker of Dharmasthala has claimed that he was asked to bury bodies in the forests and on the banks of the Netravati between 1995 and 2014, she said.

Ms. Neela demanded transparent and fair investigation in the Dharmasthala case to bring all the unseen hands involved in the alleged rape and murders to book.