E-Paper
Supreme Court tells Odisha government to take a call on Graham Staines murder convict’s remission plea
The court observed that if the Sentence Review Board (SRB) fails to take a decision in two weeks, the court will take a call.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday told the Odisha government that it will not tolerate any further delay in dealing with the remission plea of Graham Staines’ murder convict Dara Singh, observing that if the Sentence Review Board (SRB) fails to take a decision in two weeks, the court will take a call.
Posting the petition filed by Singh to September 2, a bench of justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi said, “We cannot tolerate this that the SRB is avoiding taking a decision. Has the Board taken a decision either way you must tell us or we will take our own decision.”
The state, represented by advocate PV Yogeswaran, told the court that the SRB, based on a letter from the Directorate of Prisons. is waiting for a report from the District Jail, Keonjhar, where Singh is lodged.
The bench said, “We are not concerned to know which authority you are communicating with. You take a decision either way but don’t dodge these proceedings by showing us a letter.”
The order further stated, “The SRB shall take a decision and apprise us by the next date of hearing. This matter has been adjourned time and time again to enable the SRB to take a decision on the plea of remission of sentence awarded to the petitioner who is incarcerated for a period beyond 26 years.”
The court told Yogeswaran that when the matter was last heard in July, the state indicated that SRB was in the process of taking a final decision. It was on this assurance that the matter was adjourned with an expectation that the matter would be decided in the meantime.
Singh, who is officially called Rabindra Kumar Pal, approached the top court in 2024. He was found guilty of burning alive the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Odisha in 1999.
In August 2024, the top court entertained his plea for premature release and sought the response of the state government. In his petition, Singh mentioned his good conduct in jail and added that he repented his action. Citing his age (62) and period of incarceration, he sought the benefit of the state’s premature release policy of April 19, 2022. Staines’ sons were six and 10at the time of their murder.
Singh was convicted and sentenced to death by a trial court in Odisha in September 2003. The Orissa high court upheld his conviction in 2005 but commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. That order was finally confirmed by the Supreme Court in January 2011.
Besides this case, Singh is also serving a life sentence in two other cases where the trial court convicted him in 2007, with confirmation by the high court in 2022 and by the Supreme Court in one case in 2023. During the entire period of over two decades, Singh claimed he had not been granted parole even once.
In the past, five sentence review committees have considered his case for grant of remission and rejected it. The last such decision was in February 2024.
As per the policy for remission, he is entitled to be considered for premature release after serving time for 14 years. His petition states that he “deeply regrets” the transgressions committed by him over two decades ago and blamed it on the “fervour of youth, fueled by impassioned reactions to the brutal history of India” due to which his “psyche momentarily lost restraint.”
His petition further claimed that he harboured no previous animosity towards Staines or his two sons but that he was overwhelmed by distress at the barbaric deeds inflicted upon India by the Mughals and the British. Staines was Australian.
