Sujata Bhatt Steps Back, But Her Plea Echoes: Let Me Say Goodbye to My Daughter

Mangaluru: After twenty years of searching, Sujata Bhatt has finally stepped back, not because she found closure, but because of the threats. Facing growing intimidation and pressure to withdraw, she has told the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that she no longer wants to pursue her complaint. All she asks now is to find her daughter’s remains. “Just let me bury her,” she pleads. “That’s all I want.”

For two decades, Sujata wandered through narrow streets and remote villages all through Karnataka, clutching her daughter’s photograph. She wasn’t searching for justice anymore, just the truth. Even news of death would have been better than the deafening silence.

Then came a revelation. A whistleblower claimed he had helped bury the bodies of hundreds of women, many of them victims of sexual assault, in and around Dharmasthala. It was the first time Sujata felt there might be an answer.

She travelled from Kolkata, accompanied by her legal counsel and friends, to put forward one demand in front of SIT: Find my daughter’s remains. Let me perform her last rites.

Her daughter, Ananya Bhatt, was a first -year medical student at Manipal in 2003 when she vanished during a visit to the Dharmasthala temple. Sujata, then working as a stenographer at the CBI in Kolkata, received a phone call from Ananya’s friend Rashmi. Ananya had not returned to the hostel. The warden confirmed she had been missing for three days.

Sujata rushed to Dharmasthala. Locals told her they had seen Ananya walking with temple officials. But when she approached the police, her plea was dismissed. What followed was even more harrowing, Sujata says she was abducted by three men, assaulted, and drugged. She awoke three months later in a hospital in Bengaluru. No investigation followed. No one was held accountable.

She kept searching. Through police records, hospitals, morgues, and towns. Carrying her daughter’s photograph everywhere.

The toll was immense. Her home in Kolkata was set on fire under suspicious circumstances. “Everything I had, her photos, ID cards, documents, was destroyed. It felt like they wanted to erase her completely,” Sujata says.

Despite the years of silence and state indifference, Sujata still hoped for a final act of dignity. She no longer seeks punishment or revenge.

She has voiced concerns that some police officers may be aligning with powerful individuals named in connection with the Dharmasthala case.

As the SIT investigation moves forward, Sujata Bhatt’s voice lingers, not with anger, but with aching resolve: