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Bureau Moves Court to Reimpose Death Sentence on Staines Murder Suspect

Giving into public demands, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has moved the Supreme Court of India to reimpose the death penalty on Dara Singh, the prime convict in the 1999 murder case of the Australian missionary, Graham Staines.

NEW DELHI, Sept. 6 – Giving into public demands, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has moved the Supreme Court of India to reimpose the death penalty on Dara Singh, the prime convict in the 1999 murder case of the Australian missionary, Graham Staines.

In a Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed before the apex court, India’s premier investigation agency has challenged the Orissa High Court's order which had reduced the accused Dara Singh's punishment to life imprisonment. The District Sessions Court of Khurda had condemned Singh to the death sentence.

According to the CBI, the death penalty was justified as this was the "rarest of the rare case" because "the motive was communal [and] two small children were killed...The killing was done by roasting them alive and the accused persons disregarded their pleas to come out of the vehicle."

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“We have relied on criteria laid down by the Supreme Court in the Macchi Singh case and have categorized this as the rarest of rare cases,” one CBI official said. “We have, therefore, pressed for re-imposition of capital punishment on Dara Singh.”

"The investigating agency has challenged the court's judgment on the basis of legal points which the court either did not consider or considered erroneously," the official continued. He asserted that the photographic identification of the accused persons was legally correct and conforms to the guidelines laid down by the apex court.

The CBI has asserted that the Orissa High Court did not consider the accused persons' confessional statements appropriately. It stressed that the evidence collected during the investigation clearly pointed to a criminal conspiracy hatched by Dara Singh with others to eliminate missionary Graham Staines.

The investigating agency also pointed out how the accused had come to the village one month prior to the incident in December 1999 to survey the place and then planned the attack when the victim was holding a jungle camp.

According to news sources, CBI has relied upon two separate letters written by Mahendra Hembrum, who is undergoing life imprisonment along with Dara Singh in this case, to drive home the point of conspiracy.

The murder case that tugged the conscience of the nation and received global media coverage took place on the night of Jan. 22, 1999 when Dara Singh, alias Ravindra Kumar Pal, instigated a Hindu mob and attacked the Australia missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons who were sleeping in their jeep parked on the outskirts of Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district, Orissa. The mob, led by Dara Singh, torched the jeep, burning the occupants alive.

On June 22,1999, the CBI charged 18 people, including Dara Singh, for the murders but it was only on Jan. 31, 2000 that Dara Singh was finally arrested in the jungles of Mayurbhanj district, Orissa.

On Sept. 22, 2003, the District and Sessions Court, Khurda, sentenced Dara Singh to death and awarded life imprisonment to 12 others. However, Oct. 10, Dara Singh challenged the ruling of the lower court in the High Court of Orissa, finally getting a reprieve on May 19, 2005.

While delivering its 106-page judgment, the Division Bench, comprised of Chief Justice Surjit Burman Roy and Justice Laxmikanta Mahapatra, stated, “The eyewitnesses never attributed any particular fatal injury to appellant Dara Singh for which he can be held individually responsible for the death of the three deceased persons or for the death of any of them. Evidence against the participants – including Dara Singh – being of identical nature, they were all equally responsible for the three murders. Therefore, no justification is available from the evidence on record to single out Dara Singh for convicting him under Section 302 IPC…the sentence of death thereunder cannot be sustained and must be set aside.”

However, the court went on to add that though the appellant cannot be held individually liable, he can be held “liable vicariously along with others by invoking Section 149 IPC, for the murder of the three deceased persons.”

Though the Division Bench called the evidence furnished by the prosecution against Dara Singh “weak and speculative in nature,” it said that he was part of an “unlawful assembly” that had committed the murder, and, hence, reduced Singh's death sentence to one of life imprisonment.

The Orissa High Court also acquitted 11 others whom the lower court had given life imprisonment in the case stating that the convictions and sentences of the remaining 11 appellants “cannot be sustained as there is no reliable evidence on record as regards their identification.” The Court, however, confirmed the trial court’s decision to award life imprisonment to another convict, Mahendra Hembrum.

On Aug. 16, 2005, Dara Singh had filed a SLP before the Supreme Court, appealing against the decision of the Orissa High Court, contending that his conviction was merely upheld in the Orissa High Court on the basis of presumption of his presence at the site of the incident as the mob was shouting slogans in his name.

“The conviction of Dara Singh is solely on the basis of mere presumption, which is contrary to the principles of criminal justice and devoid of law,” said Sibu Sankar Mishra, the lawyer who had filed the petition on behalf of the accused.

Besides the killing of the Australian missionary, Dara Singh is also the prime accused in the murder of Arul Doss, priest of Jambani church in Mayurbhanj district. Fr. Doss had succumbed to arrow-shot injuries when Singh and 21 others allegedly raided the church in 1999 a few months before the murder of Graham Staines.

He is also the accused in two other murder cases including the Aug. 26, 1999 incident at Padiabeda weekly market in Mayurbhanj district where a Muslim garment trader, Sk. Rehman was burnt alive and the Aug. 16, 1999 incident at Kendumundi in the same district in which a helper of a truck engaged in the transportation of cattle was killed.

The Orissa High Court judgment that had sparked widespread protest within the Christian community has been seen as a deliberate attempt to encourage the Hindu extremists to unleash a fresh reign of terror on Christian missionaries in Orissa and elsewhere, sources say.

Though several people have claimed the hand of a Hindu fundamentalist group – the Bajrang Dal – behind the killing, the Wadhwa Commission – instituted to inquire into the matter – held Singh personally responsible and said that his motive was to stop the conversion of tribal communities to Christianity. There was no evidence that any one group was behind the attack, it said.

Dozens of incidents of atrocities being perpetrated on minority communities have been reported from Orissa, one of the strongholds of Hindu fundamentalists. The state, where Christians account for only 2 percent of the total population, is ruled by a coalition government, including the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). To date, anti-conversion laws exist in only three states and Orissa is one of them.

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