The picturesque temple town of Dharmasthala in Karnataka, which did not even have a police station till 2016, was jolted when a 48-year-old sanitary worker walked into the police station on 4 July, accompanied by lawyers. Together they persuaded a ‘reluctant’ police to register an FIR.

The reluctance of the police soon became evident as the complainant claimed to have buried hundreds of bodies between 1995 and 2014 under duress. Some of the bodies he buried, he said, had marks of torture, rape, strangulation and burns. He presented photographic evidence and also sought permission to exhume other bodies in the forests around the temple town.

Wracked by guilt, he said he could no longer remain silent over his actions and his complicity in the crimes. He fled Dharmasthala in 2014 after one of his family members was assaulted, and has since been in hiding. Granted protection under the witness protection scheme, he later appeared in a local court on 11 July, where he presented skeletal remains of some bodies he had buried.

The allegations sent shockwaves through the southern states from where pilgrims and visitors flock to Dharmasthala in Dakshina Kannada. As more details became public, family members of several persons — particularly women — missing or murdered, came forward seeking reinvestigation of old cases connected to the site.

Situated against the backdrop of the scenic Western Ghats and on the banks of the Netravati river, Dharmasthala houses the iconic Manjunatha temple. It is one of the richest and most influential shrines in the region and draws hundreds of thousands of devotees.

Though a Shaivite temple, it is administered by a prominent local Jain Bunt family, the Heggades. Moreover, the priests are not Shaivite, but Madhwas, whose presiding deity is Vishnu. The present Dharmadhikari Veerendra Heggade is a Padma Bhushan, and a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha [by the Modi government].

After the story broke, the Karnataka government formed a Special Investigating Team (SIT) under director-general of police Pronab Mohanty. State home minister G. Parameswara hoped the SIT would uncover the truth and also accused the opposition BJP of not wanting an investigation into the matter.

Meanwhile, the complainant’s lawyers have voiced disappointment over the delay in police permission to exhume more bodies, most of which were buried at night in deserted locations. Nearly 30 years have passed since the complainant started burying the bodies, so he is unlikely to reach the exact burial spots but — they argue — he still deserves a chance.

K. Parshwanath Jain, spokesperson for the Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala, acknowledged that there were claims of burials, some of them in the temple premises which had caused public apprehension. He hoped that a fair and transparent investigation would clear all doubts and clear the temple’s name.

However, adding another dimension to the controversy, the temple Dharmadhikari’s brother sought and obtained a court order blocking as many as 8,842 media links to the case. A Bengaluru court granted his request to block both print and digital media from publishing any defamatory content against the temple and its administration.

The media gag order not only targets major newspapers like Deccan Herald and The Hindu but includes a slew of YouTube channels, news websites, Facebook and Reddit posts. The John Doe order, as it is called, also extends to unnamed organisations and platforms, resulting in a wide-reaching media gag.

A YouTube channel, Third Eye, has approached the Supreme Court arguing that the gag order was issued ex-parte in just three hours without hearing the affected parties; it involved around 390 news organisations and nearly 9,000 news links. The justification for the gag order, said the petitioner, was that the reporting was potentially defamatory. The Supreme Court, however, asked the petitioner to first approach the high court.

Undoubtedly, the unexplained disappearances, clandestine burials, chilling accounts of violence and sexual assault involving men, women, young girls and children have left the public unsettled. With all the ingredients for a crime thriller, only time will tell if the investigation will uncover a buried truth or collapse under the weight of speculation and power.