In a significant development, the Karnataka High Court on Friday, August 1, quashed the gag order imposed by a local court against media coverage of the ongoing Dharmasthala’s alleged mass burial case.
The High Court observed that the order withheld the general public’s right to information, especially in a matter involving allegations of sexual assault, rape and criminal wrongdoing.
This ruling comes after a YouTube news channel, ‘Kudla Rampage‘ challenged the order which restricted media from publishing any content related to Karnataka‘s temple town. The lower court had ordered the removal of a total of 8,842 links, including various YouTube videos, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and X posts and news articles.
The defamation suit was filed by Harshendra Kumar D, the brother of Dharmasthala caretaker Veerendra Heggade, in the wake of the allegations made by a former sanitation Dalit worker-turned whistleblower in fear that the temple’s reputation would be tarnished by the public.
On July 31, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) recovered human bones during the excavation of the sixth burial site on the third day.
Two human bones, suspected of a male, have been found at three meters on the third day of the excavation site near the Nethravathi River. It is believed to be one of the 13 spots where the former Dalit sanitation worker-turned-whistleblower claimed he had buried many bodies between 1995 and 2014.
The recovered bones will be documented and sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) for further examination and DNA analysis.
The controversy erupted on July 3, when a former sanitation official alleged that he had been compelled to bury human remains, largely women’s bodies, washed up on the banks of the Nethravati river near the famous Dharmasthala temple. The witness was a Dalit man who said the burials took place over almost two decades, from 1995 to 2014. A case was lodged the next day, July 4.
The testimony, now under record in a magistrate’s court, triggered massive public outrage and compelled the Karnataka government to form a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the serious charges.
