Click to play videoBangalore: A 14-year-old girl in Karnataka accuses the relative of a powerful pontiff of molesting her. The police file a complaint--four years late.
The police delay in filing a complaint may be related to the fact that Jagadish Sharma--the man accused of molesting the girl--is the brother-in-law of Raghaveshwara Bharti, the pontiff of the 1,300-year-old Ramchandrapura Mutt in Karnataka.
Bharti earned fame when he organised a massive World Cow Conference in 2007. His mutt is visited by top politicians and Bollywood celebrities.
Sharma allegedly molested the girl, who is 18 now, repeatedly in 2005 at a charity hostel run by the mutt. The girl, whose parents run a snacks shop in Sagar town in Shimoga district, tried to kill herself because of Sharma.
Sharma once held a public meeting where Haratalu Halappa, a state minister and an important supporter of Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa, dared anybody to take action against him.
Even the Opposition Congress and the Janata Dal-Secular are quiet over the issue. Karnataka Home Minister V S Acharya, however, denied that the government was reluctant to probe the allegation against Sharma.
"The government has no role in this. We will not put pressure on anybody," said Acharya.
The Ramchandrapura Mutt denied shielding Sharma. "These allegations are motivated. Some people want to defame us. There is no truth in it," it said in a press release.
Girija Vyas, chairperson of the National Commission for Women, told CNN-IBN that the girl’s parents have approached the commission for help and she promised she would “instruct” the Karnataka government to speed up investigation.
Civic groups in Karnataka say the girl’s fight for justice is similar to that of Ruchika Girhotra, a budding tennis player who was molested by a senior police officer in August 1990 and later committed suicide.
S P S Rathore, a former Haryana director general of police, was found guilty of molesting Ruchika nine years later but he got only six months’ imprisonment as imprisonment.
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