Dharmasthala ‘secret burials’: Bengaluru court grants ex parte injunction to delete over 8,000 links on various platforms
The case pertains to alleged secret burials of bodies at Dharmasthala in Karnataka which, the petitioner claimed, led to baseless allegations against his family and caused him "loss of reputation".
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A Bengaluru court has granted an ex parte injunction to “delete/de-index” a total of 8,812 links on various platforms related to the Dharmasthala secret burials case.
The injunction order on July 18 by the Additional City Civil and Sessions Court was based on a petition filed by Harshendra Kumar D, brother of BJP MP D Veerendra Heggade and secretary of the Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Educational Society.
The petition had sought the court to issue directions to “remove/delete/deindex the unverified false, baseless, reckless and defamatory allegations…against the plaintiff, his elder brother Dr D Veerendra Heggade and his family members, the temple and the institutions run by them.”
The case pertains to alleged secret burials at Dharmasthala – a temple town in the coastal Dakshina Kannada district – which, according to the petition, “caused loss of reputation and integrity of the plaintiff”.
Earlier this month, a First Information Report (FIR) was registered at Dharmasthala police station based on a complaint by a whistleblower who alleged that he was forced to bury several bodies of women which had signs of sexual assault. On July 19, the Karnataka Government announced a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case, based on requests by lawyers and social activists.
The petition listed 4,140 YouTube videos, 932 Facebook posts and videos, 3,584 posts on Instagram, 37 Reddit threads, 108 reports published by newspapers and online portals across the country, and 41 posts on the platform X.
The petition had a total of 338 respondents, which included national and state media outlets, YouTube, Meta, Reddit and social activists from across Karnataka and the neighbouring state of Kerala. It sought directions “from abuse of freedom of speech and control from uploading false, frivolous and reckless defamatory video contents”.
“Unknown persons or parties are cropping up and starting to make allegations against the plaintiff, his elder and his family members, the temple and the institutions run by them,” petition said, and “vested interested persons are continuing to make false, frivolous, baseless and vexatious video contents.”
The petition said it “contended that though there is no allegation against the plaintiff and his family members in the FIR or in the investigation so far made, the defendants are making defamatory and false allegations without any basis.”
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