Karnataka police have registered another FIR against rape-accused Lingayat seer Shivamurthy Murugha Sharanaru, the head of a prominent Chitradurga math, after a 12-year-old girl filed a complaint alleging that she was sexually assaulted by him. Shivamurthy is currently under judicial custody till October 21, after he was arrested for sexually assaulting two minor girls, aged 15 and 16, who were residing in the residential quarters of the math.
The 12-year-old girl approached the Mysuru police along with her mother and filed a complaint against the seer. She alleged that Shivamurthy sexually assaulted her for two years at the residential hostel managed by the Murugha math. In her complaint, the girl alleged that two other girls were also sexually assaulted by the seer. According to Stanley, the chief of the NGO Odanadi which helped the girl and her mother file the complaint, it is unclear if the police are calling the other two girls mentioned for investigation.
An FIR has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 in Nazarbad police station of Mysuru city following the direction of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC).
In September, two girls filed a complaint against the seer for sexually assaulting them for years. They said that one of them had been sexually assaulted for 1.5 years, and the other for 3.5 years. In that complaint, the girls mentioned that 11 others were sexually assaulted by Shivamurthy. Six days after the FIR was registered, Shivamurthy was arrested by the police, and is currently in judicial custody, after he was denied bail five times. Apart from the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, he was also charged under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act as one of the survivors is from a Dalit community.
Watch: A swami accused of rape and the politics around it