Dharmasthala case: Religious heads meet Amit Shah in Delhi, demand NIA probe

New Delhi: Various Hindu and Jain religious heads and community leaders on Thursday urged Union Home Minister Amit Shah to introduce legislation to safeguard saints, religious institutions, and places of worship from repeated physical and digital assaults.

A delegation of seers, under the banner of Sanatan Sant Niyog from Karnataka, met Shah and also demanded that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) conduct a probe into the alleged conspiracy against the temple town of Dharmasthala.

The delegation said Dharmasthala was being targeted in the same manner as other Hindu pilgrimage centres, such as Sabarimala and Tirupati. According to sources, Shah assured the seers that he was closely monitoring developments in the case.

The delegation was led by Vachananand Swami of Harihar Lingayat Panchamasali Peeth, and accompanied by seven other prominent seers.

Referring to recent developments in Dharmasthala, the seers described them as “painful, intolerable” and “a sham,” terming them an assault on the tenets of Sanatana and Jain Dharma.

Citing instances of violence, they recalled the murders of seers in Maharashtra’s Palghar and the mysterious death of Acharya Shri Kamakumar Nandi Maharaj in Karnataka’s Belagavi in 2023, saying such incidents underline the lack of safeguards for religious figures. They also flagged repeated cases of idol vandalism and temple desecration as crimes against the soul of the Hindu and Jain communities.

The memorandum urged a law modelled on the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, criminalising insults, harassment,  violence, and defamation—offline and online—against saints, alongside stronger protection for temples, idols, and pilgrimage sites.