The Supreme Court on Friday upheld life sentence for Dara Singh after turning down a death penalty plea for killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons in Orissa twelve years ago.
The Supreme Court said, “We hope Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of religion playing a positive development integrating into a prosperous nation will be realized.”
“There is no justification from interfering in someone’s belief through force, conversion or false promise that one religion is better than the other,” the court observed.
In 2003, a trial court in Orissa’s Khurda district had convicted all 13 accused.
While Dara Singh was awarded death sentence, the others were sentenced to life in prison.
However, two years later in 2005, the Orissa High Court commuted Singh’s sentence to life.
While the HC convicted Singh and one of his accomplices Mahendra Hembram, it acquitted 11 others.
But Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which was probing the case, prayed for death sentence for Singh, who was linked with Hindu right-wing group Bajrang Dal, for leading the brutal murders of Graham Staines and his two sons, aged eight and nine, in on Jan 22, 1999.
They were burnt alive in a jeep at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district while asleep in a jeep as a mob poured petrol over the car and set it on fire. The Staines tried to escape, but the mob allegedly prevented them.
Staines, a christian by faith, dedicatd his life for services of the leprosy patients in Orissa for 30 years.
The Supreme Court’s bench, comprising justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan on Dec 15, 2010, had reserved its judgement after hearing the arguments of
CBI’s counsel and Additional Solicitor General Vivek Tankha and the counsel for the convicts.
Counsels K T S Tulsi and Ratnakar Dash, besides advocate Sibo Shankara Mishra, had appeared for the convicts.
The CBI counsels had argued that that Dara Singh deserved death sentence as the murders were committed in a most “diabolic and dastardly manner,” which warranted exemplary punishment.
“We are more than satisfied. Law has taken its own course, said Johyn Dayal of United Christian Forum, reacting to the verdict.
But on the Supreme Court observation of forced conversion, he said it was ‘cheesy’ and they will request the court to revise the words.
Reacting to the development, Kamini Jaiswal, a senior lawyer of Supreme Court, said she was against death penalty but if at all death penalty was applicable, this was a fit case.