New Delhi: The Supreme Court has sought a response from CBI on the remission plea of Ravindra Pal alias Dara Singh, who is serving life sentence for the 1999 murders of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two minor sons in Odisha’s Keonjhar.
Singh was convicted and sentenced to death by a CBI court in 2003. Two years later, the Orissa High Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment, which was upheld by the apex court in 2011.
In his plea, filed through advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, Singh in July last year had sought the application of a more liberal remission policy to ensure his premature release from a prison in the state where he has been lodged for almost 25 years, while referring to the remission granted to Rajiv Gandhi’s killer.
While asking the CBI to file its reply in four weeks, the two-judge bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and SVN Bhatti impleaded it as the second respondent since it was investigating agency in the case.
During the hearing on Monday, the SC also granted the Odisha government four weeks time to file its reply.
Senior law officer of the Odisha government, Shibashish Mishra, submitted that the premature release of the convict should have been considered by the competent authority and sought two more weeks time to file its reply. “There are five committees that dealt with the premature release of the convict (Singh). The latest report of the committee is of February 20, 2023,” he told the court.
Mishra added that he would place all the five committees’ decision regarding convict’s remission in the court.
A mob led by Singh, who originally hails from Auraiya District in Uttar Pradesh, had set the station wagon in which Staines and his two sons – 11-year-old Philip and 8-year-old Timothy – on fire at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district on the intervening night of January 22-23, 1999.
He has also been convicted in the murder of Muslim trader Shaikh Rehman at Padiabeda village in Karanjia sub-division and a Christian priest, Fr. Arul Doss, at Jamboni village in Mayurbhanj district.
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In his plea, Singh said that that he repented the offences as he was then “overwhelmed by distress at the barbaric deeds inflicted upon India by the Mughals and the British”. The 61-year-old further mentioned that he has never been released on parole and could not perform the last rites when his mother passed away.
Staines and his wife Gladys worked in Mayurbhanj Evangelical Missionary organization at Baripada caring for leprosy patients. Gladys, who was awarded the Padmashree in 2005, had earlier said that she had forgiven the killers of her husband and sons and holds no bitterness against them.
