Chinnaiah named sole accused

Last year, Chinnaiah claimed to have carried out dozens of secret burials in the temple town. Based on his allegations, the Dharmasthala police filed a First Information Report (FIR) on July 4 and sought an official statement from him in court.

Chinnaiah appeared before a magistrate’s court in Belthangady on July 11, 2025, to provide a statement. On July 19, the Karnataka government constituted an SIT headed by DGP-rank officer Pranab Mohanty.

The SIT’s search for the bodies for over a month proved futile, following which Chinnaiah was arrested on August 23, 2025, on charges of providing false information. Months later, in November, the SIT filed an initial report before the Belthangady magistrate’s court, saying it had found no evidence to substantiate his claims.

Chinnaiah had produced a skull he claimed was a part of the “secret burials” he had conducted at the temple town. SIT investigations, however, revealed that the skull was given by the uncle of a teenage girl who was raped and murdered in the temple town in 2012. The 2012 murder probe did not stand up to legal scrutiny, and no one was found guilty by the courts.

At the conclusion of its probe, the SIT has named Chinnaiah as the sole accused, charged with providing false information. Investigators have further indicated that several activists from the region—Mahesh Thimarody, Jayanth T, and Vittal Gowda—and former police official Girish Mattanavar were part of an alleged misinformation plot.

The SIT said Chinnaiah was part of a conspiracy hatched by Thimarody, Mattanavar, Jayanth T and Gowda to target the administrators of the Sree Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Temple Trust and its ‘dharmadhikari’ Veerendra Heggade, a Rajya Sabha MP associated with the BJP.

No evidence to back allegations

Several aspects of the ‘secret burials’ investigation that began in July 2025 unravelled on account of the lack of evidence.

Chinnaiah, whose identity was initially protected, claimed that he witnessed some murders being committed in a “cruel manner”, adding that he was forced to dispose of the bodies. “I have buried hundreds of bodies, and the final rites were not performed respectfully. The guilt is haunting me, and I believe that the final rites should be performed to pave a respectful farewell to the deceased,” he said in a letter sent to the police through his advocates ahead of the filing of the case.

A two-week search for the remains, however, yielded no major results.

The SIT, which began the search for the remains on July 29, 2025, found bones at one of 13 locations indicated by Chinnaiah, police sources said. The remains of a person who allegedly died by suicide were found during a search operation on the banks of the Nethravati River and the forests surrounding the bathing ghats near Dharmasthala, sources added.

An elderly woman, Sujatha Bhat, had filed a complaint stating that her daughter, a medical student at Manipal, went missing in Dharmasthala in 2003. The local police did not register a First Information Report, and after preliminary investigations, the SIT could not corroborate her statements.

Chinnaiah moves court on ‘SIT failure’

In June this year, Chinnaiah, who was released on bail last year, approached the Karnataka High Court over the SIT’s delay in filing a chargesheet and prosecuting others in the case. He stated that the SIT has only named him as an accused but has not filed a final report in the case, giving rise to “the doubtful circumstances involved in the matter”.

Chinnaiah’s petition filed on June 8 says the SIT filed a preliminary inquiry report in November 2025 naming five people as conspirators in perpetrating the ‘secret burials’ claim on social media. “Though they have named aforesaid persons as conspirators, there is no action taken against them. Further, there is no separate crime case registered against them for having played fraud on the court and having caused loss to the state exchequer through the process of law,” the writ petition, which is to be heard on July 22, states.

“Non-completion of the investigation and non-taking of action against those persons named in the preliminary enquiry report is nothing but failure on the part of SIT to discharge their statutory duties,” the plea adds.