Tumakuru: Former Congress Minister K.N. Rajanna has come down heavily on his own party for the initial handling of the Dharmasthala case, alleging that using an unrelated skull to defame the revered shrine of Hindus was a deliberate attempt to tarnish the sacred site’s reputation at the national level.

Addressing reporters in city yesterday, Rajanna said, “Once a body is buried, no one has the authority to exhume it without due legal process. If exhumation is required, it must be done in the presence of the jurisdictional Magistrate. The law is clear on who has authority over a buried body and under what conditions.”

He questioned why no inquiry was conducted into the skull’s origin before the probe began. “Launching an investigation without verifying the source was reckless and has unnecessarily damaged Dharmasthala’s reputation,” he remarked.

Rajanna also criticised the Special Investigation Team (SIT) for escalating the case without justification. “They dug indiscriminately across several locations, causing distress to local residents,” he said.

Expressing strong disapproval of the investigation, Rajanna said the absence of “basic common sense” in the early stages created avoidable chaos.

“This is not about left-wing or right-wing politics. The complainant’s background and motives should have been thoroughly examined before proceeding. Instead, authorities rushed to record a Section 164 statement before a Magistrate and formed an SIT, escalating the matter needlessly,” he added.

Stressing that the first step should have been interrogating the person who brought the skull, Rajanna concluded, “Had this been done from the outset, much of the current uproar could have been avoided.”