Pandu Pujari — the counsel for Suresh, a tribal individual from Kushalnagar in Kodagu district, who was imprisoned for a year and a half after being falsely accused of murdering his wife — has urged the government to drop IPS officer Jitendra Kumar Dayam from the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the reported mass burials at Dharmasthala in view of his alleged role in the falsification of charges against the tribal man.
In a letter to the Home Minister and the Director General of Police, Mr. Pujari opposed Mr. Kumar’s inclusion in the SIT in view of the direction issued by the 5th District and Sessions Court in Mysuru to initiate a departmental inquiry against the latter along with three others involved in the case.
Recalling the case, Mr. Pujari said that Mr Kumar, while working as a probationary Assistant Superintendent of Police, had prepared a ‘mahazar’ (spot panchanama) of the site in Shanabhoganahalli village under Bettadapura police station limits in Mysuru district’s Periyapatna taluk, where skeletal remains had been found in November 2020.
Subsequently, Prakash B.G., the Investigating Officer in the case had arrested Suresh, an innocent man, alleging that he had murdered his wife Mallige, and claimed that the skeletal remains recorded in the ‘mahazar’ were those of Mallige.
