This is the third police case registered against the chief pontiff and the matha’s administration in less than two months.
Published Oct 21, 2022 | 7:46 PM ⚊ Updated Oct 21, 2022 | 7:46 PM
Murugha matha seer Shivamurthy Sharanaru (Supplied)
Two undocumented minor girls were never put up for adoption. Another minor went missing — allegedly fled — from the hostel, only to be found dead.
These are the fresh allegations levelled against the Murugha Matha in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district, whose chief pontiff is in jail for the sexual abuse of minors.
Shivamurthy Sharanaru, currently booked under the ‘Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for sexually abusing at least six minor girls so far in two different FIRs, faces a new charge.
A fresh case was filed under the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act against the seer on Tuesday, 18 October, based on a complaint by a Child Welfare Committee (CWC) member.
The latest FIR named the 64-year-old head pontiff, the matha secretary, others involved in the establishment’s administration, and the chief of a child adoption centre, the Madilu Dathu Kendra (Madilu Adoption Centre).
The matha now faces allegations of concealing from the CWC the existence of two minor girls on its premises.
“The matha did not intimate the CWC about a 4.5-year-old girl who wasn’t even enrolled in the Madilu Adoption Centre. She is claimed to be an orphan who was abandoned at the matha,” a CWC member, who wished to remain anonymous, told South First.
“The standard procedure is that we should be informed, and we will try to locate her parents as per our guidelines,” added this CWC employee.
CWC members grew further suspicious after they heard about a 15.5-year-old girl who had been in the care of the matha since her birth.
“There were no birth certificates — or any other documents pertaining to the birth — of these two girls, and they were simply taken care of by the matha without the knowledge of the CWC or the government, which is illegal,” the member said.
With cases piling on one after the other, the Department of Women and Child Development has now decided to shift the Madilu Dathu Kendra to a different location in the district, or to the neighbouring Davangere district.
Members of Mysuru-based NGO Odanadi Seva Samsthe, which has been constantly helping the six minor survivors so far, told South First that a host of irregularities have been found at the matha.
The NGO has filed specific complaints on behalf of three more minor girls. Two of the inmates, the NGO alleges based on the CWC complaint, were not enrolled for adoption, violating the law, and the third minor died under mysterious circumstances after going missing from the matha.
The NGO has also pulled up the CWC and district police over lapses.
It has drafted a petition about the longstanding irregularities by the CWC and has posted it to the Juvenile Justice Board Judge, Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Court, in Chitradurga.
“Why were the two girls not enrolled or given up for adoption? There are glaring irregularities in the adoption procedures at the Madilu Dathu Kendra within the matha, to which the CWC and the District Child Protection Unit (DCPU) turned a blind eye and a deaf ear. Now, both the agencies are acting innocent,” KV Stanley, a founder of Odanadi, pointed out.
A more serious concern has come up in the case of a 14-year-old girl. In Odanadi’s petition to the judge and the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS), the NGO alleged that the minor went missing from the Murugha Matha two years ago.
“Apparently, she had some issues in the matha and decided to return to her hometown in Andhra Pradesh. Her visually-impaired father, a native of Andhra Pradesh, used to seek alms in Chitradurga. He had three daughters, including the girl who ran away from the matha. Since the father was unable to care for them, he had approached the Murugha Matha and enrolled his three daughters there,” the petition states.
“Due to some issues at the matha, the eldest of the three ran away from the hostel two years ago, and her body was found under mysterious circumstances on a railway track near the border of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh,” Stanley told South First.
“Though the railway police had taken up a case based on the injuries she sustained and the post-mortem report, there was no breakthrough in the case and no accused was identified,” he added. And that’s the current status of the case.
“We are in the process of collecting more information regarding this girl. According to the police, the matha had not even filed a missing complaint, and every aspect of this case seems to get murkier as and when we try to collect information about it,” Stanley told South First.
The NGO has also filed a complaint against the CWC members and the district police personnel with the ICPS, a Centrally-sponsored scheme aimed at building a protective environment for children in difficult circumstances, as well as other vulnerable children, through government-civil society partnerships.
“ICPS Director Chandrakanth MV, an IPS officer, visited the NGO on Tuesday and spent around 4.5 hours with the survivors, counselling them to move on with their lives and focus on their careers. The IPS officer also assured the NGO members that he would take up the issue with the district administration to provide professional counselling for all the minor girl survivors,” Parashuram, one of the directors of Odanadi, told South First, quoting the IPS officer.
The Odanadi Seva Samsthe is also in consultation with their legal team to file a PIL on the deceased girl. They are also looking to get hold of the post-mortem report of the deceased from the railway police, and possibly request the court to exhume her body for further investigation.
This is the third police case registered against the chief pontiff and the matha’s administration in less than two months.
The first FIR was registered on 26 August 26, where the prime accused was Shivamurthy Sharanaru and four others: the hostel warden Rashmi, a junior pontiff named Basavadithya, the matha’s secretary Paramashivaiah, and an advocate Gangadharaiah.
The second FIR was registered on 13 October, by a single mother who was employed as a cook at the matha. She alleged both her daughters, along with two of their hostel mates, were also sexually assaulted and abused by the seer.
Based on her complaint, the Nazarbad police in Mysuru took registered another POCSO Act and rape case, this time booking Shivamurthy Sharanaru as the prime accused along with six others, including Rashmi, Basavadithya, Paramashivaiah, Gangadharaiah, and two doorkeepers identified as Mahalinga, and Karibasappa.
These two men allegedly waited outside the seer’s door and would not let anyone else in when he was inside the room with the minor girls.
