The Dharmasthala “mass burial” issue exposed several leftist media and Dravidianist propaganda artists. The case unravelled within weeks of the allegations being made public.
As the masked man confessed to the SIT that a gang approached him in Chennai in December 2023.
“They asked me how many bodies I had buried when I worked in Dharmasthala. I told them the truth: that I had legally buried the bodies of pilgrims who came for salvation, through the police and gram panchayat,” the complainant stated. “But the gang insisted that I should say that the bodies were buried illegally. They pressured me… they changed my mind.”
The masked man revealed that the gang brought him to Karnataka, trained him on what to say in court, and even provided him with the skull and bone fragments he submitted as evidence which forensic reports later confirmed belonged to a man who died 30 years ago. He further confessed that he was instructed to coordinate his false testimony with another complainant, Sujatha Bhat, who had filed a missing person report for her daughter.
The SIT has since confirmed that the skull and bone fragments were of men who had died decades earlier, undermining the complainant’s earlier claims. Excavations at 17 sites identified by him yielded no evidence of mass graves. At one site, partial skeletal remains were found but were confirmed to be male, dating back 30 years.
As the case crumbled, political attention turned to identifying the “gang” behind the conspiracy. BJP MLA from Udupi, Yashpal Suvarna, and Independent MLA G. Janardhan Reddy publicly named Congress MP Sasikanth Senthil as the key conspirator. They alleged that Senthil, who served as Dakshina Kannada Deputy Commissioner, orchestrated the plot using leftist and Islamist networks he cultivated during his administrative tenure.
Now, you can identify two big players in this entire script – Sasikanth Senthil and The News Minute.
So, did Sasikanth Senthil connive with TNM to target the Dharmasthala temple and its administration?
Sasikanth Senthil x TNM – An Association That Already Existed
If we take a look at whether TNM and Sasikanth Senthil have already been involved, you can find a few video interviews of Senthil from the time of Karnataka Assembly elections in 2023.
At this time, Senthil was the Congress war room head. Subsequently, he got a ticket for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections – guess how.
Senthil was one of the brains behind scripting the “40% commission sarkar” narrative which helped the Congress to come back to power. This successful strategy reached the AICC top leadership’s notice, and he was given the ticket. And surprisingly for a first timer, he even won the election. How was this possible? Also, TNM played that able sidekick’s role very well to amplify this 40% commission sarkar narrative. Here’s an example:
Here’s where TNM comes into the picture – position him as a great person, grassroots leader, amplify his Dalit image and make it more humane.
In a series of interviews with TNM, Senthil was able to establish this as a “fact”.
Building The Persona: The Making Of A Crusader
From the outset, TNM positions Sasikanth Senthil not merely as a politician, but as a principled crusader – the “righteous underdog” who sacrifices a prestigious bureaucracy post for the ideals of democracy and social justice.
Senthil’s resignation from the IAS is portrayed as an act of supreme moral courage. The interviews repeatedly return to this story, cementing him as a man of principle who “sacrificed” a powerful post for the sake of democracy.
The interviews repeatedly frame Senthil through his Dalit background, intellectual gravitas, and purported courage in standing up to the “fascist” machinery of the BJP and RSS.
Instead of neutral scrutiny, TNM constructs a sympathetic, even heroic, mythos around Senthil, building him up as a visionary of equity, a voice for the subaltern, and a lonely warrior on an ideological battlefield. His personal anecdotes, philosophical musings, and sweeping critiques are presented uncritically, offering the audience a neatly packaged, morally superior protagonist.
Leading Questions, Softballs, And Unquestioned Narratives
At the heart of these interviews is TNM’s interviewing style, which can only be described as leading, prompting, and at times overtly softball. Senthil is asked repeatedly about his “politics” and why he “fights”, not to examine or challenge, but to facilitate and expand his narrative. Questions accept his premises at face value: his characterizations of the BJP, his reading of the Congress revival, and his harshest indictments of current governance all flow unimpeded.
When Senthil makes incendiary allegations on EVMs being unreliable, the government being “fascist,” or institutions being “captured”, the interviewers never counter, ask for evidence, or present a balancing view. TNM forgoes any semblance of critical journalism, choosing instead to echo Senthil’s language, accept sweeping generalizations, and allow speculative predictions about the fall of political opponents.
Even controversies, like flaws within the Congress or DMK, or nuanced debates over communal issues, are gently skirted. Senthil is allowed to dismiss allied failures or deflect probing questions with jargon-laden philosophies, while crucial aspects of his partisan role are left undisclosed to the audience.
Connecting The Dots: From Studio To Dharmasthala
This established modus operandi is crucial context for the Dharmasthala alleged mass burial issue. When reports surfaced, TNM was at the forefront, weaving a sensational narrative targeting the Dharmasthala temple administration, a story that now stands completely exposed as a fabrication. The so-called whistleblowers and accusers have publicly confessed that they lied.
The question that now screams for an answer is: who was the architect of this lie?
Given TNM’s documented history of being that loyal sidekick and mouthpiece, as well as acting as an uncritical megaphone for Sasikanth Senthil’s ideology, a deeply troubling possibility emerges. Were they not just aligned in ideology but also in action?
Did Sasikanth Senthil, the politician TNM so carefully positioned as an intellectual crusader against “hierarchies,” provide the political impetus and the ideological framework for the story? Did he feed TNM the unverified allegations, secure in the knowledge that their “journalists” would never ask him for proof, just as they never had before? Did TNM, in turn, willingly become the propaganda arm, launching a calculated attack on a Hindu institution based on nothing but the word of a political ally they were committed to promoting?
The synergy is unmistakable. The same outlet that built Senthil’s persona through leading questions and softball interviews appears to have used the very same tactics to build a fictional narrative around Dharmasthala. They took unsubstantiated claims, refused to apply journalistic rigor, and presented them as a definitive indictment, all to serve a political narrative and target a perceived ideological opponent.
What TNM Did
Is Sasikanth Senthil behind the Dharmasthala conspiracy? We don’t know.
Is the “Chennai gang” referred to by the ‘masked man’ Chinnaiah somehow connected to those at TNM and the Congress MP? We don’t know.
Did The News Minute and Congress MP Sasikanth Senthil hatch an elaborate plan to settle scores with Dharmasthala temple management? We don’t know.
Anybody can allege anything through conjectures and weave a compelling narrative.
And that is exactly what TNM did in the Dharmasthala case. Weave a story without any proof.
Subscribe to our channels on Telegram, WhatsApp, and Instagram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.