Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple

Dharmasthala: The Shadows Behind the Sanctum

Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru).

Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This man left his job in 2014 when his own relatives were sexually assaulted by the temple people. He was intimidated into silence. He could not bear the guilt and grief anymore and thus he approached the magistrate with his confession.

The temple is situated on over 400 acres of land. Beneath the aura of sanctity lie chilling stories of sexually exploited women. It is estimated that at least 400 women went missing or found dead over the past two decades. The police didn’t take any interest in investigating the cases. Because the family that runs the temple, the Heggades, are extremely powerful.

The media didn’t report these cases for the same reason: fear. The News Minute, which had reported on the case extensively for years, was compelled to take it all down.

I came to know about this only when a Malayalam weekly wrote its latest editorial on the issue expressing surprise over the silence of political parties as well as the media. Well, surprise is out of place, we know. There’s so much oppression and exploitation of all types of citizens – not only women – going on in this country every single day. But I don’t wish to digress.

Dharmasthala has transfixed me.

Dharmasthala raises a more focused question: are we safe even in our sacred spaces?

PM Modi in the temple