New Delhi: The Supreme Court has deferred the hearing on a remission plea filed by Rabindra Kumar Pal alias Dara Singh to May 13.
He has been behind the bars for the last 26 years over his conviction in the murder of Australian missionary Graham Stewart Staines and his two minor sons in Odisha.
During the proceedings before a bench comprising Justices Manoj Misra and Manmohan on Wednesday, the Odisha government’s advocate general, Pitambar Acharya, informed the court that the state’s Sentence Review Board is actively examining Singh’s case. The government has requested reports from prison authorities, as well as from administrative and police officials in Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah — Singh’s native place – to inform its decision.
“The board will take an appropriate decision after that,” Acharya stated.
His co-convict, Mahendra Hembram, was released in April last year following a remission recommendation based on good conduct.
The case dates back to January 1999, when Staines and his sons, Philip (10)
and Timothy (6), were burned alive in their station wagon at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district, amid allegations of religious conversions. Singh was arrested on January 31, 2000. Singh and Hembram were first sentenced to death by a CBI court in Bhubaneswar in 2003, which was commuted to life sentence in May 2005 by Orissa High Court. The Supreme Court upheld the life sentence in January 2011, rejecting both the convicts’ appeals against the conviction and the CBI’s plea for harsher punishment.
On July 9, 2024, the Supreme Court issued notice to the Odisha government on the plea for Singh’s premature release. Through advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, Singh said he had spent over 24 years in incarceration and “repented” the consequences of his action taken in a fit of “youthful rage”.
In September 2025, the Sentence Review Board, which met to decide on the premature release of around 100 life convicts as per the guidelines issued by the state government in 2022, deferred its decision on Singh’s release despite recommendation by the authorities in Keonjhar prison, where he is lodged, as well as the district authorities.
Earlier this year, on February 20, the Odisha government sought time to file an affidavit detailing its remission policies, both current and those applicable at the time of the offence and conviction. The court permitted the state to proceed under its existing policy framework.