Govt panel told about Dharmasthala unnatural deaths in 2016 | VS Ugrappa Interview

Like our journalism? Become a subscriber: https://www.thenewsminute.com/subscri... Or contribute to our reporting fund: https://rzp.io/l/reporting-fund Recently, a sanitation worker claimed that he had secretly buried several bodies in Dharmasthala village in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district. He claimed that he buried them between 1995 and 2014 while he was employed by the Dharmasthala temple administration. The man’s claims have once again shone light on something that local activists have been alleging for a long time—that many unnatural deaths have occurred in Dharmasthala over several years and that they need to be investigated. This was also brought to the notice of a Karnataka government committee in January 2016. The committee, which was called the expert committee on the prevention of exploitation and violence against women and children, was headed by Congress MLC VS Ugrappa. It submitted its final report in March 2018. TNM spoke to VS Ugrappa on what he was told about those unnatural deaths in 2016, and how inadequate the response was from government officials.