By Srinivas Rayappa
Content warning: This article contains descriptions of violence, abduction, assault, and investigative details that readers may find disturbing.
A Doctor’s Dream Interrupted
In 2003, 21-year-old Ananya Bhat embodied everything that progressive India hoped to become—and everything that a single mother’s love and sacrifice could achieve. A first-year MBBS student at Manipal Medical College, she represented not just a generation of young women breaking barriers, but the triumph of merit over circumstance, of determination over adversity.
According to Sujatha Bhat’s account, she was born and brought up in Parkala, a suburb of Udupi city located east of Manipal. She married a civil engineer from Suratkal, one of the major localities in the northern part of Mangaluru taluk. After their marriage, they lived in Suratkal where Ananya was born. However, according to Sujatha, after her husband returned from work abroad, he abandoned the family, leaving her to raise Ananya alone.
Sujatha could have given up, could have sent Ananya to relatives while she rebuilt her life. Instead, she made a choice that would define both their futures: she would raise her daughter as a single parent, no matter the cost. To make ends meet, Sujatha worked two jobs—a day position at an office and evening work as a domestic helper, washing vessels in several houses. The woman who had once dreamed of a stable middle-class life now scrubbed dishes in other people’s homes to ensure her daughter could attend school.
Ananya understood the magnitude of her mother’s sacrifice. A silent but intensely hardworking girl, she watched her mother leave for work each morning and return exhausted each night, all for her education. This awareness drove her to academic excellence. She completed her schooling at St. Philomena’s School, then excelled in her PUC at Government College Mangalore, graduating with outstanding results that reflected both her intelligence and her determination.
When Ananya secured a medical seat at Manipal Medical College on merit—one of India’s most competitive professional programs—it represented the culmination of years of struggle and sacrifice. By 2003, their situation had improved. Sujatha had secured a position as a stenographer with the Central Bureau of Investigation in Kolkata, working in the investigative department. While it wasn’t a high-paying job, it offered something she had never had before: stability and the dignity of working with India’s premier investigating agency.
Medical education remained expensive, and with both college fees and hostel expenses for Ananya’s stay at Manipal, Sujatha was still struggling to make ends meet on a stenographer’s salary. But for the first time in years, mother and daughter could see light at the end of the tunnel. Ananya was six months into her medical studies, excelling as always. In a few more years, she would be Dr. Ananya Bhat, and her mother’s years of washing dishes and working multiple jobs would finally be vindicated.
But on what should have been an ordinary college trip to seek blessings at the renowned Dharmasthala temple, that bright future—built through years of struggle and sacrifice—was extinguished forever.
The Pilgrimage That Became a Nightmare
Like countless students before and after her, Ananya planned a visit to Dharmasthala with her classmates—a common practice among medical college students who sought divine blessings as they embarked on their challenging academic journey. According to Sujatha’s account, Ananya had planned this trip with two of her friends who were from Dharmasthala. Their plan was simple: seek the blessings of Lord Manjunatha at the temple, and then the two local girls would go to their homes to collect fresh clothes before returning.
The day proceeded as planned initially. The three friends visited the temple together, but when it came time for the other two to visit their homes, Ananya made a fateful decision. For reasons known only to her, she chose not to accompany them. Instead, she decided to spend more time at the temple, perhaps seeking additional blessings or simply enjoying the peaceful atmosphere of this sacred place.
The two friends left, expecting to return with fresh clothes and continue their trip together. But when they returned to the temple at 6:30 PM, Ananya was nowhere to be found at the place where they had left her.
What followed was every parent’s nightmare played out in an era before mobile phones could provide instant communication. The two friends searched desperately for Ananya until 8 PM, calling her name, checking every corner of the temple complex, asking other devotees if they had seen their friend. As darkness fell and their search proved fruitless, panic set in.
With no way to contact Ananya directly, and no mobile phones to coordinate their search, the two friends made their way to a phone booth. The call they made would shatter a mother’s world. Sujatha Bhat was at her workplace in Kolkata when the landline rang with news that would change everything: Ananya was missing.
Given the late hour and the distance involved, Sujatha advised the girls to return and continue searching the next day, hoping against hope that Ananya would somehow find her way back to the hostel. But when the two friends returned the following day and still found no trace of their missing friend, they contacted Sujatha again with the devastating news.
For a single mother working as a stenographer, already stretching every rupee to afford her daughter’s medical education, the journey from Kolkata to Dharmasthala represented both a financial burden and a race against time. Unable to afford air travel, Sujatha took the train—a journey that would take two precious days while her daughter remained missing.
A Mother’s Desperate Search
When Sujatha finally reached Dharmasthala and joined the two girls in their search, Ananya had already been missing for several days. The crucial initial hours—when missing persons cases are most likely to be resolved—had slipped away while a desperate mother traveled across the country by the only means she could afford.
Together with Ananya’s two friends, she began a systematic search, carrying her daughter’s photograph and showing it to shopkeepers, temple visitors, and local residents. They asked everyone: Have you seen this girl? Do you know what happened to her? Where did she go?
What they discovered should have triggered an immediate police investigation. Local shopkeepers told them they had indeed seen Ananya—but not alone. According to these witnesses, two unidentified men had been seen taking Ananya away. After that, no one had seen her again.
For any reasonable person, this information would have provided a clear lead: Ananya had not simply wandered off or gotten lost. She had been taken by unknown men. This was not a case of a missing person who might turn up safely—this was potential abduction.
The Familiar Script of Indifference
When Sujatha arrived at Belthangady police station with her complaint about her missing daughter, she encountered the same callous script that had been used to dismiss grieving families for decades.
“Your daughter must have eloped with some boy,” the officers declared dismissively. “Don’t we have any better business than look for girls who elope with their boyfriends?”
Here was a mother who had traveled two days by train to search for her missing daughter, who had witness accounts of her daughter being taken away by unknown men, who worked for India’s premier investigative agency—and she was being treated with the same victim-blaming contempt that had characterized every case we have documented in this series.
The police not only declined to register her complaint but went further—they ordered her to retrace her path and leave immediately without uttering another word. The intimidation was clear: asking questions about missing daughters was not welcome at Belthangady police station.
When Sujatha approached the temple administration directly, she received an identical response: “Your daughter might have run away with someone. Do you know how difficult it is to manage a temple as big as ours with lakhs of devotees? We can’t keep an eye on each and every girl.”
The casual dismissal, the victim-blaming, the complete absence of concern for a missing devotee—it was identical to the police response. For Sujatha, this was the final straw. She lost her composure at the temple administration and left the place in utter disgust.
The Trap
Overwhelmed and not knowing where to turn next, Sujatha sat on a bench nearby, trying to make sense of what was happening. Her daughter was missing, she had witness accounts of abduction, yet both police and temple authorities were treating her like a nuisance rather than a desperate mother seeking help.
It was then that four men with their faces covered with cloth approached her. They told her they knew where her daughter was.
For any parent in Sujatha’s situation, these words would have been like a lifeline. After days of searching, after being dismissed and humiliated by authorities, here was someone claiming to have information about Ananya. Without raising any suspicion, she accompanied them, hoping against hope that she was finally going to find her daughter.
But it was a trap.
What happened next represents one of the most chilling examples of how far the network around Dharmasthala was allegedly willing to go to prevent exposure. According to Sujatha’s account, she was not simply threatened or intimidated—she was abducted and subjected to violence that left her fighting for her life.
Her hands and legs were tied, and she was brutally assaulted. When she accused her abductors of cheating her into believing they knew the whereabouts of her daughter, she was hit on her forehead with a heavy object. The violence was so severe that she still bears the marks on her hands to this day, with one hand visibly twisted from the assault.
Soon after, she was rendered unconscious. She says she woke up three months later in Agadi Hospital in Bengaluru. When Sujatha regained consciousness, she discovered the full extent of what had been done to her. “I don’t know how I got there or who brought me from Dharmasthala. My bag, identity card, bank passbook, and vanity bag that were with me were all missing. I have a wound on my head requiring eight stitches from the severe blow.”
The head injury requiring eight stitches was only the visible evidence of the violence inflicted upon her. The theft of her identification documents, bank passbook, and personal belongings suggested a calculated effort to strip her of her identity and resources. Most crucially, the three-month period of unconsciousness had effectively eliminated any possibility of mounting an immediate search for Ananya.
A Life Completely Destroyed
What happened next is even more harrowing for the poor old lady. Discharged from hospital she did not know where to go. She had taken a few days leave from her workplace. But here she was 3 months later without a penny. She decided to visit her husband’s place in Suratkal where she once lived with her daughter. This place had been locked away for long. But to her shock, the doors were open and all the belongings were either burnt or lying scattered. All her college documents and job-related documents were burnt. She had lost everything.
She then decided to take VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme) from her job and found a person by name Rangaprasad, who had just lost his wife and was as lonely and single as her. She decided to accompany him to Bangalore and they were in a live-in for 22 years. Not knowing all along where Ananya was but also fearing for her own life. She found solace that she now had a partner and thought of just spending the rest of her already messed up life with him. She did odd jobs – worked in a girl’s hostel, garment shops etc and had a decent living. Unfortunately, for her on January 5th 2025, her live-in partner Rangaprasad also passed away – heart attack. She was again in the dark.
The Silence of Fear
The attack on Sujatha Bhat sent a clear message that would echo through subsequent cases: challenge our authority, and we will destroy not just what you seek to protect, but you yourself. “Having lost my daughter without any trace, I have been living a discouraged life in fear for many years,” Sujatha would later write in her complaint. She recalled that she was discouraged from pursuing the case further. “They told us to stop asking questions,” she reportedly said, emphasizing the climate of fear and silence that surrounded Dharmasthala for decades.
The Professional Who Became a Victim
Ananya Bhat’s case stands apart from the previous victims we have documented in our series “The Shadow of Dharmasthala” in several crucial ways. Unlike Vedavalli Harale (the teacher who challenged caste discrimination), Padmalatha (the farmer’s daughter whose father contested elections), or Soujanya (the innocent student), Ananya had no obvious connection to local politics or power struggles.
She was simply a medical student on a college trip—someone whose disappearance should have triggered massive institutional support rather than systematic cover-up. Her mother’s struggle as a single parent should have evoked sympathy and assistance, not violence and intimidation.
Instead, Ananya’s case demonstrates how the alleged network around Dharmasthala had evolved to handle even high-profile disappearances. By 2003, the mechanisms for silencing victims and their families had been refined to perfection. The attack on Sujatha Bhat represented a new level of brazenness—the willingness to assault and disappear the mother of a missing person, even when that mother worked for India’s premier investigative agency.
The Whistleblower’s Revelation
For twenty-two years, Sujatha Bhat carried her trauma in silence, believing that speaking out would only result in further violence. But in July 2024, revelations emerged that would finally provide a context for understanding what might have happened to Ananya.
A former sanitation worker at Dharmasthala temple came forward with explosive allegations that he had been forced to bury hundreds of bodies between 1995 and 2014—bodies of women and children who showed signs of sexual assault and violence. The horrific case of mass burial, where more than 100 women, including students, were raped, murdered, and buried, has emerged in Dharmasthala, Karnataka. In the complaint filed with the police, the former sanitation worker has reported accompanying photo evidence of skeletal remains, that many of the female bodies were without clothes or underwear.
The whistleblower’s timeline was significant: 1995 to 2014. Ananya had disappeared in 2003—right in the middle of the period when, according to these allegations, systematic killings and secret burials were taking place.
The whistleblower claimed to have buried some of the bodies on the banks of the holy Netravathi River, to ensure quick decomposition of the bodies. For Sujatha, these revelations provided a horrifying possible explanation for her daughter’s fate and her own brutal treatment.
A Family’s Unending Search for Truth
For Sujatha Bhat, the decision to finally come forward in 2024 was not driven by any hope that Ananya might still be alive. After twenty-two years, she had accepted the reality that her daughter was dead. Her motivation was different—and deeply rooted in Hindu tradition.
“We are from the traditional Hindu Brahmin community, and performing funeral rites (shraddha karma) for the deceased is a very important duty in life. If this is avoided, I as a mother cannot find redemption,” she wrote in her complaint.
Sujatha’s request was heartbreaking in its simplicity: she wanted to find her daughter’s remains so she could perform the proper funeral rites according to their religious customs. Now, over two decades later, she has returned with her legal counsel and friends from Kolkata, hoping to find her daughter’s remains, at the very least, to perform her last rites. “I just want to set her free,” she told media after exiting the Superintendent of Police’s office.
The mother who had once been silenced through brutal violence had finally found the courage to speak again. But her goal was no longer justice in any conventional sense—it was the basic human dignity of being able to bury her child.
The Institutional Response: A Study in Indifference
When Sujatha finally filed her complaint with Dakshina Kannada Superintendent of Police in July 2024, the response she received illustrates how little had changed in over two decades. Earlier in the day, Sujata Bhat, accompanied by her advocate Manjunath N, met the Superintendent of Police of Dakshina Kannada district, seeking justice and a renewed investigation into the case. Based on the SP’s advice, she later visited the Dharmasthala Police Station and submitted her complaint around 8 PM to Sub-Inspector Samarth R. Ganiger.
While authorities registered her complaint, Sujatha’s subsequent experiences with the investigation process led her to lose faith entirely. Refusing to comply with a police summons for questioning, Sujatha said she had lost faith in the investigating team. “I will not cooperate until an impartial investigation is guaranteed,” she told the press.
Her distrust was not paranoia—it was based on bitter experience. This was the same woman who had been assured of proper investigation in 2003, only to be abducted and brutalized when she asked too many questions. She had learned that in Dharmasthala, the difference between victim and accused often depends on how inconvenient your questions become.
In her complaint, Sujatha has made startling allegations that mass burials are taking place in Dharmasthala without due legal process. She further accused a senior police officer of leaking witness confessions, potentially derailing the probe.
Understanding that local authorities had failed her before, Sujatha took her case to the highest levels of the Indian judicial system. Sujatha Bhat, the mother of missing medical student Ananya Bhat, has submitted formal complaints to Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Karnataka High Court Chief Justice, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, State Home Minister, and the DGP, urging them to intervene in what she claims is a compromised investigation into her daughter’s disappearance from Dharmasthala.
The Price of Progress
When the Soujanya protests began gaining momentum under the leadership of Mahesh Thimarodi and Girish Mattananavar, ably supported by Soujanya’s mother, something stirred in Sujatha’s broken heart. The tears of both mothers seemed to come together—two women separated by nearly a decade but united by the same devastating loss. Sujatha joined the protests, not just seeking justice for Soujanya, but for all the victims who had suffered at Dharmasthala.
Sujatha harbors no illusions about her own case. She has no faith that Ananya will ever be found or that she will see justice for her daughter. How could she? There is no evidence that wasn’t destroyed during her three-month coma, no dead body was ever found, no complaint was ever accepted, no FIR was ever filed, no investigation was ever conducted. She lost the three most crucial months in a hospital bed while any trace of her daughter disappeared forever. She has no money, no strength to fight because of her age and frailty.
But she believes something profound: if Soujanya gets justice, it will be justice for Ananya and all the other victims. Looking at the pattern across all these crimes, she believes the perpetrators might be the same. The recent emergence of a whistleblower has given her the faintest ray of hope that maybe, just maybe, the truth will finally emerge.
After twenty-two years, Sujatha’s expectations have become painfully modest. She no longer hopes to find Ananya alive—she has come to terms with the reality that her daughter may never return. Her only wish now is to find Ananya’s remains so she can give her daughter a respectable funeral according to Sanatana Dharma. She knows she failed to get justice for her daughter, but she at least wants to bury her child with respect as per the rituals of Brahmins.
Today, Sujatha has lost all hope in life. At her age, frail and alone, she sells healthy fruit juices in parks to earn a few rupees just to survive. The woman who once worked for India’s premier investigative agency, who sacrificed everything to educate her daughter, now depends on the kindness of strangers buying juice to keep herself alive. “If today my daughter were alive, she would have been a doctor,” she says with tears in her eyes. “She would have taken care of her mother, and I wouldn’t be struggling for every penny even today. Life would have been good.”
The cruelty extends beyond even Ananya’s disappearance. In interviews, Sujatha has spoken about how her husband’s family property in Suratkal—which should rightfully be inherited by Ananya as the legitimate daughter—is now being usurped by her husband’s siblings, taking advantage of Ananya’s absence.
The Continuing Shadow
The shadow of Dharmasthala has claimed many victims over the decades, but few cases illustrate its reach and ruthlessness as clearly as Ananya’s disappearance. A young woman pursuing medicine—the noblest of professions, dedicated to healing and service—vanished without a trace, and when her mother came searching, she too became a victim of the same forces that had claimed her daughter.
Twenty-two years later, that shadow continues to stretch across Karnataka, touching new families, claiming new victims, and proving that in some places, the pursuit of truth remains as dangerous today as it was when Ananya Bhat first set foot in Dharmasthala with dreams of becoming a doctor.
This is the fourth article in our ongoing series “The Shadow of Dharmasthala” examining unresolved cases in the temple town. Previous articles in this series:
- The Shadow of Dharmasthala: The Vedavalli Tragedy – The 1979 murder of teacher Vedavalli Harale who challenged caste-based discrimination
- The Shadow of Dharmasthala: Padmalatha Pays the Price of Defiance – The 1986 disappearance and murder of 17-year-old student Padmalatha
- The Shadow of Dharmasthala: Unraveling the Soujanya Case – The 2012 rape and murder of 17-year-old student Soujanya and the controversial investigation
Note: This article is based primarily on the firsthand account of Sujatha Bhat, as shared with media over the years, supplemented by available media reports and police complaints. Given that Sujatha suffered severe head injuries and was in a coma for three months in 2003, and considering the passage of 22 years, some details may be subject to memory limitations. Limited police records or court documentation exists for this case, as no formal investigation was conducted at the time of the disappearance. Some factual discrepancies exist in media reports (such as whether Ananya studied at Manipal Medical College or Kasturba Medical College). The article presents Sujatha’s account as she has consistently stated it, while acknowledging the inherent limitations of firsthand testimony given the circumstances and time elapsed.
