Soujanya Case Left Out In Sit Probe: Is The Karnataka Government Protecting Powerful Interests?

The Karnataka government’s decision to constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the disturbing pattern of deaths and suspicious burials in and around Dharmasthala could have been a turning point in restoring public trust. Instead, the government’s calculated move to exclude the Soujanya rape and murder case from the SIT’s purview has raised serious and unavoidable questions.

Let us be clear: this is not just a procedural oversight. This is a deliberate omission of the most important, most symbolic case in the entire narrative of unaccounted deaths and systemic silence. When the Home Minister publicly stated that the SIT, led by senior officer Pranab Mohanty, had been told not to touch the Soujanya case, the signal sent to the public was devastating — justice will be rationed, not delivered.

So now it is time — indeed long overdue — for citizens to ask hard questions.

Why has the government consciously left out the case that catalyzed years of protests, candle marches, student uprisings, and press investigations? Why the silence on who made this decision and why? Why this surgical exclusion of the one case that had the potential to unravel the deeper rot beneath?

The public is not naïve. The alleged involvement or protection of politically linked figures — individuals at the helm of a sprawling religious-commercial empire said to be worth tens of thousands of crores — has been whispered in corridors and shouted from protest stages for over a decade. The suspicion is now too loud to ignore: Is this SIT designed to shield those in powerful rather than uncover the truth?

If that is not the case, then the Chief Minister and the Home Minister must come forward and explain themselves. They must state, on record, why Soujanya’s case was left out. Was it due to legal complications, or political pressure, or something more sinister? In a democracy, silence in the face of such questions is itself a form of complicity.

And the questions do not end there.

Why has the government not fixed a time frame for the SIT to report its findings? Why reject the longstanding demand for Supreme Court oversight of this sensitive investigation?

We, the citizens of Karnataka, demand that:

1.   The Soujanya case be immediately brought under the SIT’s jurisdiction.

2.   The probe be monitored by a sitting Supreme Court judge.

3.   A fixed time frame for the investigation be announced and adhered to.

Justice cannot be sacrificed at the altar of political convenience. The government cannot claim to investigate truth while leaving out the case that most defines the public’s sense of betrayal. If this SIT truly aims to uncover facts and restore confidence, it must begin by including the Soujanya case and committing to judicial transparency.

Anything less will confirm what many already fear — that this is not an inquiry. It’s a cover-up wearing a badge.