Dharmasthala case: SIT submits final report before Belthangady court

Mangaluru, Jul 15 (PTI) The SIT probing allegations of "multiple murders, rapes and burials" in the temple town of Dharmasthala submitted its final investigation report before the Belthangady court here on Wednesday. The report, comprising 3,082 pages, was submitted in 12 separate files before Additional Civil Judge Shashank Nagendra Bhat, a police official said. Along with the earlier 3,923-page report, the total investigation records now stand at 7,005 pages. When asked, a senior police official refused to divulge the contents of the final report and said, "That is a judicial document and only the court can have the first look." Special Investigation Team Superintendent of Police CA Simon, Inspector Kusumadhar, Inspector Manjunath and other members of the investigation team were present in court during the submission. Earlier, on November 20, 2025, the SIT had filed a 3,923-page report under Section 215 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against C N Chinnaiah (complainant) and activists who had earlier supported the complainant in the case—Mahesh Shetty Timarodi, Girish Mattannavar, Jayanth T, Vittal Gowda and Sujatha Bhat. The court subsequently directed the SIT to submit a final report. A controversy erupted last year after a complainant, later identified as C N Chinnaiah and arrested on charges of perjury, claimed that several bodies, including those of women with signs of sexual assault, had been buried in Dharmasthala over the past two decades. The allegations had implications for the administrators of the local temple. The SIT, formed by the state government to probe the allegations, conducted excavations at multiple locations identified by the complainant in the forested areas along the banks of the Netravathi River in Dharmasthala, where skeletal remains were found at two sites. Later, the SIT recovered additional skeletal remains during a search operation in the Banglegudde forest area near the Nethravathi bathing ghat. Chinnaiah, who was granted bail by a court in Mangaluru, subsequently approached the Karnataka High Court, alleging that activists and others had coerced him into making false allegations to defame Dharmasthala and its administration. He claimed that he had been made part of a "conspiracy". PTI COR KSU SSK