BENGALURU – The political situation in Karnataka is getting worse because accusations of wrongdoing at the Dharmasthala temple have erupted into a public fight between the state’s two main parties. On July 3, a former sanitation worker filed a police report saying he had buried the bodies of several women who had supposedly been raped and killed on the temple grounds. This was the start of the dispute.
The Congress-led government then set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the claims. This included digging up bodies from the site. State Home Minister G. Parameshwara said in the Karnataka Assembly this week that the excavation activity was on hold for now while forensic study of skeletal remains recovered in two places was going on.
The BJP, on the other hand, has jumped on the subject and is attacking how the state government is handling the investigation. On Friday, BJP state president B.Y. Vijayendra lashed out at Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, accusing them of a politically motivated investigation. “We were happy about the investigation,” Vijayendra stated. “The Chief Minister thought that by digging pits, he could find a big scandal.” They dug 15 to 16 pits, but they still didn’t find anything.
Vijayendra also said that the government wasn’t doing anything about what he called “malicious propaganda” on social media that was meant to “malign the Dharmasthala temple” and “hurt Hindu religious sentiments.” He said that the government acted quickly against Hindu campaigners for internet posts, which was different from this.
D.K. Shivakumar, the Deputy Chief Minister, defended the SIT investigation and said that the BJP was trying to make the issue political. “This is something that BJP buys. He answered, “What they are doing is politics.” Shivakumar said he was sure about the inquiry, which is being headed by SIT chief Pranab Mohanty. “The investigation team, led by senior officer Mohanty, is doing its job well,” he said.
The argument took a new turn when a woman who had said her daughter, Ananya Bhat, had gone missing from Dharmasthala in 2003 changed her mind. Sujatha Bhat, the woman, said her claims were “fabricated” and that two well-known campaigners had “persuaded” her to make the bogus accusation. Some of the original claims are now less credible because of this retraction, and it has given greater support to those who say the whole thing is a political plot.