Like the classic “toolkit” playbook that gets activated whenever there is an opportunity to malign Hindu institutions, the so-called Dharmasthala “mass burial” case became the latest target. A flood of unverified claims and sensationalist reports were churned out across mainstream outlets and YouTube channels, each trying to outpace the other in “breaking news.” In the end, most peddled outright falsehoods without the slightest effort at verification what was nothing but a calculated smear campaign against a respected Hindu religious institution.
Among the worst offenders were channels notorious for anti-Hindu and anti-BJP propaganda. One prime example is ETamil News, where anchor Abdul Hakkim interviewed Dravidianist sympathiser and professor Manjula. The entire discussion was a concoction of fake claims, emotional theatrics, and Hinduphobic rhetoric designed to push a Dravidianist agenda.
தர்மஸ்தலா வழக்கில் சிக்கிய பகீர் ஆதாரம், பின்னணியில் இருந்த பாஜகவின் முக்கிய புள்ளி..Professor Manjula Exclusive..!#DharmasthalaMassBurial #SITExhumation #SkeletonRemains #MassBurialInvestigations #NethravathiRiver #DakshinaKannada #ForensicAnalysis… pic.twitter.com/hXQqac1UtM
— etamilnews (@etamilnewsx) August 6, 2025
Right from the beginning of the interview in the video published on 6 August 2025, when asked about the “current status” of the case, Manjula fabricated a tale, alleging that 11 sites had been dug up and that over a hundred skeletons had been unearthed. She claimed she “could not bear it,” deliberately setting an emotional tone before launching into direct attacks on dharmic saints and Hindu institutions. Her words were carefully chosen to inflame suspicion and disgust, such as, “Here, women were so casually treated as sexual commodities. After fulfilling their desires, to ensure no one would know, they disfigured their faces and poured acid on them. How can they be so cruel, like such monsters? I don’t know. But what are these people called? They are spiritual people, those who are in a temple. Would people in a temple commit such wrongs? Some even say, ‘Would Hindus go and do such wrong?’ Then who did this? Were the ones who did this foreigners or people who don’t follow the Hindu religion? At least tell us that openly. After all this injustice, after today retrieving more than a hundred buried skeletons, can you confidently say that those who did this are not Hindus? The perpetrators were also Hindus, and the women who were murdered were also Hindu women.”
She even attempted to drag Dharmasthala’s present head, Veerendra Heggade, into the mud, linking him to the BJP and alleging that this “connection” would ensure no justice is delivered. Throughout the interview, the professor avoided facts and instead indulged in broad-spectrum attacks on Hindu practices, calling temples unsafe, accusing dharmic leaders of predatory crimes, and weaving conspiracy theories about cover-ups by the forest department and police.
She said, “We often say, ‘How could a fair-skinned person will lie?’ In the same way, we’ve been conditioned to believe that those who are in a temple, those who manage or protect a temple they couldn’t possibly be bad people. For women, there are restrictions on going anywhere, but if they say they’re going to a temple, they’ll be sent. So, this level of injustice has happened in a place that is considered holy, divine, and trusted. What these people did was fulfill their sexual desires, and then, fearing that the victims might reveal what happened, they murdered them. And where would they go to bury them? They told the sanitation worker, ‘Let’s just illegally bury this, since there’s no one to question us anyway.’ When they said this, they created fake stories, saying, ‘These women came to the Netravati river to bathe and died,’ or ‘They died in some accident.’ They even told them that burying unclaimed bodies is a righteous act, a good deed. By brainwashing them with such ideas, they took the bodies and illegally buried them in a forest area. Then, what were the forest officials doing? What are the forest department people doing? It’s baffling.”
Manjula’s narrative crescendoed with wild allegations that villagers were aware of murders, avoided the temple, and were silenced under threat. She claimed missing reports were brushed aside and that families were intimidated into fleeing town. With no evidence, she speculated that “powerful people” bribed their way into ensuring the truth was buried forever.
She alleged, “It’s become clear that the police did not do their job, they did not fulfill their duty. How do we understand the fact that there were no deaths or fatalities in that specific period, from this year to that year? And they’re saying that the girls from those homes are missing, aren’t they? The child who went to school is missing, the child studying medicine is missing. Think about how many dreams those parents must have had. Imagine how much that child would have regretted not having experienced anything, not having seen anything good or bad in life, thinking, ‘I haven’t experienced anything yet.’ Those girls have gone missing, and their whereabouts are unknown. Even when a missing person’s report was filed, if someone said, ‘Who may she ran away with,’ how devastating would that be for those parents? How much mental anguish would they have endured? So I understand that no one was even prepared to take those complaints.”
She added, “That’s why they haven’t even registered who died after that or the names of the deceased. I even have a suspicion that perhaps all of those people were forced to vacate the town. It wouldn’t be surprising if they were threatened with, ‘Look, if you keep coming this way, we’ll wipe out your entire family. Either you stay quietly with your mouth shut, or you get out of this town.’ Perhaps something like that happened, and they sent everyone away. I don’t know, because when they talk about this issue, they say that after the sanitation worker went into hiding, the number of missing women in that town dropped to zero. What could be the reason for that? The people of the town came to a realization. They decided, ‘When we go to schools or colleges associated with this temple or under its authority, these kinds of sexual assaults and murders happen. So we’ve figured it out, and from now on, we shouldn’t go there.’ That’s one report that came out. So maybe the people thought, ‘The problem is us being in this area. We can just leave from here and at least save the family we have.’ I don’t know if that’s what happened. So, the blatant truth that is clear to us is this: because a very influential person took care of everyone they needed to bribed them this truth never came to light, not even to the bare minimum of our attention.”
But reality demolished this carefully manufactured script. The SIT investigation exposed the fraud:
- No human remains were found in the alleged “mass grave” sites.
- The single skull showcased as “proof” was decades old and identified as male.
- The 100+ bones discovered in one of the sites belonged to a male.
- The so-called “masked man,” Chinnayya, confessed he was trained by a Chennai-based gang to fabricate the story.
- Key “witnesses,” including Sujatha Bhat (who posed as a victim’s mother), publicly admitted on record that the entire tale was fabricated.
In short, what was paraded as a horrific temple scandal was nothing more than a propaganda operation fake evidence, staged testimonies, and deliberate emotional manipulation all aimed at discrediting a Hindu institution.
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