New Delhi: Taking strong exception to the Odisha government’s delay in deciding the premature release plea of Rabindra Kumar Pal, alias Dara Singh, the Supreme Court issued a final ultimatum to the State Sentence Review Board to take a call by September 2.
Singh is serving a life sentence for the brutal 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two young sons.
During the hearing, a division bench comprising Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Vijay Bishnoi cautioned the state government against continuous procrastination, warning that the top court would take the decision into its own hands if the review board fails to act. “You take a decision whatever you want or else we will take a decision…We are not concerned how you are communicating; just take a decision. We can’t tolerate this avoiding taking a decision,” Justice Misra remarked to the state counsel, expressing frustration over the state’s indecisiveness.
The warning came after the court, during the previous hearing on July 14, directed the Odisha government to take a call on the plea by August 19, even remarking that Singh should be allowed to celebrate Independence Day if released by then. However, when the proceedings resumed, the state’s counsel initially sought a passover before producing a letter from the Directorate General of Prisons and Correctional Services when questioned about the delay. The letter noted that reports regarding Singh’s antecedents were still pending from the State of Uttar Pradesh, where he originally hails from, as well as from the district jail in Kendujhar.
In its formal order, the bench recorded: “This matter has been adjourned time and again to enable the respondents to take a decision on the plea of remission of sentence awarded to the petitioner who is incarcerated for a period exceeding 26 years. It appears that when the matter was adjourned last, the State Sentence Review Board was in the process of taking a decision on the petitioner’s plea. Based on that, the matter was adjourned. Today, the learned counsel for the respondent has placed before us a letter of the Directorate of Prison and Correctional Services addressed to the counsel, wherein he stated that the report from the district jail, Kendujhar, [Orissa] is yet to be received. We are not informed of the decision of the sentence review board. List this matter on 2 September. The sentence review board should take a decision and apprise us.”
Singh, represented by advocates including Vishnu Shankar Jain, has sought remission on the ground that he has already served more than 25 years in prison. Under the state’s remission policy, convicts whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment become eligible for consideration after 25 years of incarceration. He was sentenced to death by the trial court in 2003; the Orissa High Court commuted it to life imprisonment in 2005, a decision confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2011.
In his petition filed in 2024, Singh submitted that he had committed the crime in a “fit of youthful rage” and was now repentant. Relying on the reformative theory of punishment and citing the Supreme Court’s 2022 judgment granting premature release to convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, he pleaded to be allowed to reintegrate into society as a reformed person. He has never been released on parole, even when his mother died.
The crime occurred on January 22, 1999, in Manoharpur village in Kendujhar district, when a mob led by Dara Singh trapped Graham Staines and his sons—Philip, aged 10, and Timothy, aged 6—inside their station wagon while they were sleeping outside a local church. The mob set the vehicle ablaze and prevented the father and sons from escaping, burning them alive. Singh was arrested in January 2000 after a year-long manhunt and has remained in custody since.
The court has now fixed the next hearing for September 2, making clear that further delay will not be countenanced.
