Mangalore, Oct 10: Even as many have been anonymously stating that there were influential people working behind the scenes to hush up the Saujanya murder case, a Hindu leader on Thursday has come out in open and has directly attacked a powerful religious leader of Dharmasthala and land mafia of pressurizing the police to neglect the case.
Mahesh Shetty Timarodi, addressing a news conference said that although it had been a year since Soujanya was raped and murdered at Pangala near Dharmasthala, the police department had made no headway in the case. There are influential forces at work trying to compel the officials involved not to investigate the case. The murder was a result of a mistaken identity by the land mafia in their quest for illegal land acquisition. There are people who have witnessed the abduction of Soujanya, but have been silenced by the same forces, he claimed, demanding for a CBI probe in the matter on behalf of Soujanya's parents.
Raising suspicion on the police department, he said that although Soujanya's father Chandappa Gowda had filed a complaint in January against Dheeraj Jain, Mallik Jain and Udaya Jain, the police had not conducted any inquiry against them till date. Instead, a mentally unstable man named Santosh Rao was arrested and the police claim that he was the sole culprit, although there is not even a single case lodged against him, he said.
He also voiced suspicion that Soujanya had been murdered in a confined space somewhere else and her body was dumped near Pangala thereafter. “It had rained heavily on the day she was raped and killed. But, neither her clothes nor her college books were soaked. We believe her body was dumped at the spot before dawn,” he said, adding that there were no bruises on her body to suggest that she had been raped on the ground.
He also alleged the then SI Yogish Kumar was the prime accused in the case, and had vehemently tried to cover up the case and steered the probe in a different direction.
‘No probe in unnatural deaths in Dharmasthala'
There have been around 450 cases of unnatural deaths over the last one decade in Belthangady taluk, and most of them were girls. However, no proper action was taken in any of the case. The management of the college where Soujanya studied has even forbidden students from taking part in any protest for her cause. The media channels that telecast these reports are also intercepted, claimed Mahesh Shetty.
He said that even though students of the college were insured, the college administration so far had not provided the insurance money of Rs 1 lakh to her parents.
He further said that a mass campaign would be held in future, if justice was not done to Soujanya's family.
Soujanya's father Chandappa Gowda, mother Kusumavati and uncle Vittal Gowda were present on the occasion.
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