The first human remains have been found in an investigation into the alleged secret burial of hundreds of women and girls, many showing signs of sexual assault, over two decades in the holy Indian town of Dharmasthala.
In July, a former sanitation worker at the 800-year-old Dharmasthala Temple returned to the quiet town in southern India to make a startling confession to the police.
He claimed that between 1998 and 2014, he was forced to secretly dispose of hundreds of bodies of women and minors, many of which showed signs of brutal violence and sexual assault, in unmarked and random sites around the sacred town in the Karnataka state.
According to the whistleblower's complaint, he worked for the revered temple under duress for nearly 20 years before fleeing into hiding with his family in 2014.
Provoked by guilt and shame, he re-surfaced over a decade later to demand the exhumation of the hundreds of corpses who he alleged were systematically abused and murdered, and who he was told to secretly dispose of.
