Dharmasthala case: political certainty meets judicial reality

 When public anger over the Soujanya rape and murder refused to fade, Karnataka’s Home Minister G Parameshwara chose personal wish  over facts. He declared the case a “closed chapter,” insisting there was no scope for reopening it. Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar went a step further. In his characteristic bluntness, he dismissed allegations against the powerful Dharmasthala establishment as `shadyantra', effectively taking sides with the temple’s administrators. Those statements were not casual remarks; they shaped the State’s posture of denial for years.

The Karnataka High Court’s recent order has now rendered those political certainties untenable. By seeking full details of seventy-four unnatural death cases including that of Soujanya, recorded over two decades in and around Dharmasthala, the court has made it clear that closure declared by politicians carries no legal sanctity. More significantly, the court has revived a question the government deliberately buried: compliance with the CBI court’s order to set up an acquittal committee, in the Soujanya case.

That order went to the heart of institutional wrongdoing. While acquitting Santosh Rao, the CBI court recorded that the police had consciously framed an innocent man and derailed the investigation. It therefore directed the State to constitute an acquittal committee to identify and fix responsibility on the erring officers. This was not advisory. It was a mandate. The government and the police ignored it.

That silence now appears calculated. An acquittal committee would not merely expose individual officers; it would trace the chain of command behind a fabricated prosecution. It would reveal who needed a convenient culprit, who authorised the narrative of closure, and who benefited from justice being misdirected. This prospect explains the rare political consensus—across ruling and opposition lines—to look away.

The High Court has ended that comfort. Parameshwara’s “closed chapter” and Shivakumar’s “conspiracy” claims now stand against a judicial record that speaks of plots, suppression, and defiance of court orders. For the public, this intervention restores a fragile but vital belief: that when politics shields power, courts can still force the truth back into the open.