Dharmasthala case: SIT to seek extension of complainant's custody

Mangaluru, Sep 3: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) custody of complainant Chinnaiah, known as the "masked man", ends on Wednesday. The SIT is preparing to produce him before the jurisdictional local court and seek an extension of his custody.

Sources in the SIT stated that they will seek 10 days of custody for further investigation.

The police have already conducted searches and mahazar proceedings in Dharmasthala, Ujire, Belthangady, and Bengaluru. They are also preparing to take him to Mandya in Karnataka, Salem in Tamil Nadu, and the national capital, Delhi.

The SIT is also preparing to question activists Mahesh Shetty Thimarodi, Girish Mattennavar, T. Jayanth, and YouTuber Sameer, who raised their voices against temple authorities and made direct allegations targeting the Dharmadhikari.

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In addition, the SIT is interrogating Sujatha Bhat, a complainant who initially claimed that her daughter, Ananya Bhat, an MBBS student, had gone missing under suspicious circumstances. She later retracted her statement, saying she had no daughter, before going on to claim that she was blackmailed into making the allegation.

The SIT had arrested the unidentified complainant on charges of providing false information related to the Dharmasthala case.

SIT officials, who interrogated him for more than 15 hours, concluded that he had been misleading the authorities.

The sources revealed that he confessed to being lured by certain individuals to make allegations and press for a specific course of investigation.

On July 11, the complainant claimed that he had been forced to bury the bodies of women and girls who were "raped" and "murdered" in Dharmasthala, and recorded his statement.

Following the serious claims made by the complainant, authorities had carried out excavations at 17 different locations in the temple town of Dharmasthala.

In addition, the whistleblower reportedly submitted a skull, allegedly recovered from one of the burial sites, to the SIT.

The authorities are awaiting the Forensic Science Laboratory and DNA analysis reports of the sand samples collected from the 17 excavated sites.

(IANS/NS)

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