A Belthangady court has granted bail to C N Chinnaiah, arrested for perjury over his shocking claims of mass secret burials in Dharmasthala. The SIT found major inconsistencies in his statements, calling his allegations unreliable and possibly part of a conspiracy.
Mangaluru: A court in Belthangady has granted bail to C N Chinnaiah, who was arrested on charges of perjury after the Special Investigation Team (SIT) found serious contradictions in his claims regarding alleged secret burials in Dharmasthala.
Chinnaiah, a former sanitation worker, had earlier alleged that dozens of bodies of women and minor girls were secretly buried over a period of nearly two decades in the Dharmasthala area.
The case had attracted widespread attention after Chinnaiah lodged a complaint claiming that multiple victims of rape and murder were buried between 1995 and 2014.
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According to him, many of these bodies showed signs of sexual assault. Based on this complaint, the Karnataka government formed an SIT to conduct a detailed probe into the allegations.
After months of investigation, the SIT recently submitted a massive 3,900-page report to the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court in Belthangady under Section 215 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).
This section explains the legal process for prosecuting offences that affect public justice. In its report, the SIT named six individuals as accused, including Chinnaiah himself, and highlighted several inconsistencies in his statements and supporting evidence.
The SIT noted that Chinnaiah’s claims appeared unreliable and may have been part of a larger conspiracy. It also pointed out that his version of events kept changing and did not match physical evidence collected from the sites.
Due to this, he was arrested on August 23 on charges of giving false information and misleading the investigation.
Following his arrest, Chinnaiah was first kept in the custody of the SIT for questioning and later moved to judicial custody at Shivamogga. When he initially applied for bail in September, the court rejected his plea, citing the seriousness of the allegations and the fact that the investigation was still ongoing.
However, the court has now decided to grant him bail, though with strict conditions. These include limitations on his movement and restrictions on whom he can communicate with, to ensure that the investigation is not affected in any way.
As part of its probe, the SIT carried out excavation work at several locations pointed out by Chinnaiah, especially in forest areas along the Netravathi River in Dharmasthala. During these operations, skeletal remains were recovered from two different sites.
The SIT also recently discovered additional skeletal remains during a fresh search in the Banglegudde forest region near the Netravathi bathing ghat.
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Despite these findings, the SIT maintains that Chinnaiah’s original claims lack credibility and require further judicial scrutiny. The case continues to remain under close observation as authorities proceed with deeper forensic and legal examination of the recovered remains and related evidence.
This development marks a significant turn in the Dharmasthala burial controversy, highlighting the importance of truthfulness in legal complaints and the strict consequences of providing false information to law enforcement authorities.
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