Published Oct 13, 2022 | 3:47 PM ⚊ Updated Oct 13, 2022 | 3:48 PM
Murugha matha seer Shivamurthy Sharanaru (Supplied)
The Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and District Child Protection Unit (DCPU) in the Chitradurga district of Karnataka should be disbanded and its members sacked, said activists from the Mysuru-based NGO Odanadi Seva Samsthe, which had helped bring forth the alleged sexual abuse that two girls underwent at the influential Murugha Matha in the district.
The activists claimed that despite these CWC and DCPU members being appointed custodians who vowed to protect children from any kind of abuse, they tried to cover up the truth about the case to protect the accused.
“Two minor girls, losing their faith in the Chitradurga administration, had to come all the way to Mysuru and approach our NGO to seek justice. The girls then had to approach the Mysuru-district CWC and recorded their statement there, detailing the alleged sexual assaults they were subjected to by the seer,” KV Stanley, one of the founders and director of Odanadi Seva Samsthe, told the South First.
“The girls said in their statements that there are 11 other girls at the Akkamahadevi Hostel in the Murugha MAtha who are undergoing the same ordeal, and even named those 11 girls who were being exploited by the chief pontiff of Murugha MAtha, Shivamurthy Sharanaru, but what did the CWC or the DCPU in Chitradurga do about? Nothing at all!” Stanley added.
After the seer was arrested on September 1, a week after a case under the POCSO Act was registered against him, the CWC members in Chitradurga did not even bother to check on the wellbeing of the other girls at the hostel including the 11 girls, he said.
“Let alone checking on the wellbeing of the girls, the CWC and DCPU members did not even offer counselling for the girls at the hostel in a professional setup as there are no professional counsellors at the Chitradurga CWC,” said ML Parashuram, another founder of Odanadi, and also its director.
“Their way of counselling was asking straight to the girls: ‘Did the seer do anything to you?’ And the answers would obviously be ‘No’ from the embarrassed girls,” Parashuram explained.
As there are directives and guidelines involving POCSO cases that the victims should not be staying at the premises of the accused, the Chitradurga CWC on 6 October suddenly shifted around 80 girls from the Akkamahadevi hostel to different parts of Karnataka, claimed Stanley.
Some of them were sent back to their single parents, and some to other girls’ shelters run by either an NGO or the government, he said.
“How can they counsel all the 80 girls in one day at one go? They have done this deliberately to weaken the case,” Stanely told South First.
Ideally, the CWC and the DCPU had to counsel each of the girls at the hostel, winning their confidence and trust.
They were to then prepare a report on their statements and hand it over to the Investigating Officer (IO) to strengthen the case and then they could have sent the girls to other places, but here no SOPs were followed, said the activists.
“What will happen to their academics? What will happen to their future? Nothing is being considered here,” they alleged.
Stanley also stated that the term period of the present CWC members in Chitradurga was over, and that they were awaiting fresh appointments. Until then, they would not work with jurisprudence, he said.
Meanwhile, Odanadi Seva Samsthe claimed that it had been approached by a few girls over the telephone, who told them that they, too, were victims of the Murugha Matha seer.
“However, they are yet to come and file a complaint with us, which we need to carry the case forward,” said Parashuram.
Dr JS Madhusudhan, a dentist from Chitradurga who is also a lawyer and a social activist, has written to the district child protection officer in the CWC, the deputy director of CWC, the district commissioner, and the superintendent of police, stating that he had been approached by a 19-year-old girl who alleged that she was an inmate of the Akkamahadevi Hostel in the Murugha Matha and was sexually exploited for six years — from when she turned 13.
The 19-year-old slipped into mental depression after she learnt about the POCSO case involving the seer and his arrest, said Madhusudhan.
He has written to the administration seeking professional psychological counselling and support for the teen so that she may be rehabilitated.
District Commissioner Kavitha S Mannikeri told South First that she had not received any such letter. “If I get it officially, I will forward it to the police for suitable action,” she said.
On Tuesday, the Second Additional District Sessions Court’s judge BK Komala rejected the seer’s bail petition and remanded him in judicial custody until 21 October.
Recently, the Karnataka High Court approved the seer’s request of signing the cheques from jail as he claimed that he was the only trustee and that he had to pay salaries to around 3,000 employees of 150 institutions of the Murugha Matha.
The court had earlier said that the request lacked clarity as the cheques were self-addressed and not to any employee.
Chitradurga Superintendent of Police K Parashuram told South First that three people accused in the case are still absconding.
“We do not have enough evidence against A3 – Basavadithya and A5 – Gangadharaiah, a lawyer – as to their involvement in the case in order to arrest them, but there is evidence against A4 – Paramashivaiah, who was the secretary of the matha. Our men are attempting to trace his whereabouts,” Parashuram told South First.
