Nagalakshmi Choudhary
Credit: DH Photo
Bengaluru: The Karnataka State Commission for Women has urged the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to immediately undertake a thorough investigation into all cases of missing women and girls, their rape and murder cases, unnatural or suspicious deaths and other related matters — or if such investigation has already been conducted, furnish the relevant details.
Commission chairperson Dr Nagalakshmi Choudhary made the request in a letter to senior IPS officer Pronab Mohanty, the head of the SIT, on October 31.
Karnataka constituted the SIT on July 19 to probe allegations of mass burials in Dharmasthala, a temple town in Dakshina Kannada district.
Dr Choudhary said the government had appointed the SIT following the commission’s request to investigate “unnatural deaths, missing cases and sexual assault cases linked to women and female students in the last 20 years in Dharmasthala, under Crime Case No 39/2025.
The government order stated all related cases in Dharmasthala and any other such cases registered anywhere else in the state and connected to this incident would be automatically transferred to the SIT.
“Thus, both the intent behind the commission’s request and the government order indicate that the purpose of forming the SIT was not limited only to the investigation of Crime Case No 39/2025, but rather to conduct a comprehensive investigation into all cases related to women. However, so far, there is no information suggesting that the SIT has investigated such cases”.
Citing media reports, the commission noted that the SIT’s inquiry has been confined to the statements made by C N Chinnaiah, a former sanitation worker who had testified before the court claiming to have exhumed human remains between 1995 and 2014.
The investigation appears limited to the recovery of skeletal remains based on his statement, it added.