INDIAN police have arrested a former cleaner at Karnataka’s Dharmasthala temple, who recently alleged that he had been coerced into burying hundreds of bodies of women, who were raped before being murdered.
An official told the BBC that the man “has been arrested for perjury”.
In early July, the middle-aged man had lodged a police complaint and appeared before a magistrate to record his statement.
His identity has been withheld and, so far, he has appeared in public dressed fully in black, including a hood and a face mask. In the police complaint, the man claimed he worked as a cleaner at the temple from 1995 to 2014 — and alleged that he had been forced to bury the bodies of hundreds of girls and young women who were brutally raped and murdered.
He narrated five alleged incidents where he gave specifics, and said there were many others. Some of the victims, the man alleged, were minors.
He said he had been in hiding since 2014 and had returned and spoken up to silence his nagging conscience.
The man did not name anyone, but blamed the “temple administration and its staff” — allegations the temple chief rejected as “false and baseless”.
A spokesperson for the temple said it welcomed a thorough investigation and hoped police would “bring out true facts to light”.
In the complaint, the former cleaner accused temple officials of forcing him to dispose of the bodies and told police he would name the officials if they protected him and his family.
Karnataka’s interior minister Gangadharaiah Parameshwara told the state assembly last week that the protection was in place. The former cleaner said he had secretly exhumed a skeleton from one of the burial sites to prove his claims.
A special investigation team formed by the Karnataka government later recovered human remains from two of 16 suspected burial sites, according to two senior police officials familiar with the probe.
Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2025
