Amid the probe into alleged secret burials at Dharmasthala and demands for a reinvestigation of a rape and murder that took place near the temple town in Karnataka, a 62-year-old woman from Mandya has written to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) asking to be a witness.
According to sources, the Mandya woman had contacted the public helpline launched by the SIT for people to provide information relevant to the investigation. In a letter sent to SIT recently, the woman claimed that she was a witness to the kidnapping of a 17-year-old college student on October 9, 2012. The girl, who had been reported missing, was found raped and murdered a day later.
As per the letter, the woman and a relative were near Shantivana when she noticed that six people had taken shelter at a bus stop amid rain. Minutes later, the letter says, a girl walked past the people, and they kidnapped her.
While the six people had come on three motorbikes initially, a grey car, and an autorickshaw were also involved in the kidnapping, the witness said in the letter. “In recent days, I watched the developments about cases at Dharmasthala on TV channels, and saw people who had kidnapped the girl when I went to Dharmasthala..,” the letter reads, adding that the witness was ready to identify the people who kidnapped the girl.
The letter comes in the wake of renewed demands for a reinvestigation into the 2012 rape and murder case. Though one person was arrested in connection with the case, a CBI court acquitted him in 2023, recommending action against officials who botched up the investigations at its earliest stages by causing the loss of evidence that could have led the police to the perpetrators.
“This is a fit case to place before (the) acquittal committee for initiating needful action against the erring officials,” the judgment had said.
The girl’s mother recently petitioned the SIT to take up her daughter’s case.
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The Opposition BJP also demanded a reinvestigation of the college student’s rape and murder case.
On Monday, the party held a massive protest at Dharmasthala demanding that the National Investigation Agency investigate an alleged conspiracy to defame the temple town in the name of the secret burials case.
The SIT was set up after a former sanitation worker complained to the police that he had been forced to secretly bury bodies of several murder and sexual assault victims in Dharmasthala between 1998 and 2014.
