At 7.30 a.m. on Wednesday, C. Pillappa, a 45-year-old fisherman was in for a shock as he went about his usual morning routine of going to the Venkatagiri Kote lake, 55 km from Bangalore, along the Bellary Road, and about 10 km from the Bengaluru International Airport at Devanahalli. He found human bones — six skulls and 12 sets of limb bones including identifiable femurs inside a white plastic sack. Curiously, the top portion of the skulls bore markings of capitalised letters — F, I, B — inked in green using a permanent marker. The limb bones were tied with what appeared to be a red sari.
Calls media first
He called media persons to the spot before informing the police, who later arrived at 10.30 a.m. At first glance, the police suspected the bones had been dipped in some kind of acid, and that they could be remains from post-mortems in a hospital or medical college nearby.
Though they believe it could be a case of clandestine disposal of medical waste, they have registered a case of unnatural death so as to keep all ends of the investigation open.
Sent to hospital
The bones have been sent to the district hospital, which has so far not confirmed whether they are indeed remains of a post-mortem.
Vijaynagar police say the first task is to ascertain the gender and then send the skulls for superimposition to get an idea of what the dead people looked like.
‘I saw them dump it'
When a crowd gathered at the spot in the morning, a young boy from Hosa Hudiya village nearby said he had seen the bones the previous evening when he came to herd his cattle, but had fled in fear, not daring to tell anyone about it. Teju Kumar (23), another fisherman, claimed to have seen someone actually dump the bag.
He dismissed the idea that the sack might have been submerged in the lake a while back and had surfaced recently. “They are not caked in mud and show no signs of having been at the bottom of the lake,” he said.
A second set
After the police had left the spot, another set of bones, with four or five limbs and some other parts of skeletons were found. Some of the bones found were charred. When The Hindu went to the police station, the police said that was the first they were hearing about the second set of bones.
Fishermen Pillappa and Teju Kumar think the discovery could have something to do with the occult. The charred bones, found near a spot where there seemed to have been a fire, gave rise to such suspicions, they said.
