Graham Staines murder case: Rejected convict Dara Singh’s remission plea, Odisha tells SC

The Odisha Government on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it has rejected the remission plea of Ravindra Pal alias Dara Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two minor sons in 1999.

“You take whatever grounds you want to take to challenge it. Amend your petition and then argue,” a bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi told the counsel appearing for Singh.

The bench noted that a copy of the August 31 order rejecting the remission plea has been supplied to Singh’s counsel.

“The counsel representing the petitioner (Singh) prays for and is allowed two weeks to file an appropriate amendment application,” the bench said, while posting the matter after three weeks.

At the outset, the counsel appearing for the Odisha Government told the bench that the state has rejected Singh’s remission plea.

The top court had earlier pulled up the Odisha Government for not taking a decision on Singh’s remission plea. Singh, 63, has been in jail for more than 25 years.

He approached the top court in 2024 seeking premature release on the ground that he had served over 24 years in jail and “repented” for his action taken in a fit of “youthful rage”.

In his plea, Singh said he believed in ‘karmic’ philosophy and prayed for an opportunity to reform his character and cure the effects of the bad ‘karma’ he accumulated through his actions.

A mob led by Singh attacked Staines and his two sons – 11-year-old Philip and eight-year-old Timothy – while they slept in their station wagon and set the vehicle on fire at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district on the intervening night of January 22-23, 1999.

Singh, the main accused in the triple murder, was convicted and sentenced to death by a CBI court in 2003.

The Orissa High Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment in 2005, which the Supreme Court upheld in 2011.

Staines and his wife, Gladys Staines, worked with the Mayurbhanj Evangelical Missionary that cared for leprosy patients.

Gladys Staines, who was awarded the Padma Shri in 2005, had said she had forgiven the killers of her husband and sons, and held no bitterness against them.

The Odisha Government took the decision to reject Singh’s remission plea at a special meeting of the State Sentence Review Board (SSRB) on August 31, officials had said.           

The meeting resolved that “in view of certain facts and circumstances, the Board is not inclined to recommend his premature release at this stage”.

The Odisha Government, while rejecting the plea, maintained that earlier too, the SSRB had turned down Singh’s petition – on November 24, 2016, June 24, 2019, December 24, 2020, January 12, 2022, and February 20, 2023 – “on various grounds, including the societal ramifications in apprehension of communal disturbance in the area”.

Hearing the matter in August, the top court had asked the SSRB to take a decision on Singh’s remission plea and apprise the court about it.

Seeking the top court’s mercy, Singh in his plea had assured that he would give back to society through “service-oriented actions”.

He also sought a direction to the state Government to consider his case in accordance with the guidelines for premature release of life convicts issued in 2022 in the three cases in which he was convicted.

Singh, who is lodged in the Keonjhar district jail, said he had undergone more than the qualified period of sentence of 14 years under the April 19, 2022, policy and spent over 24 years of actual imprisonment without remission.

He also submitted that the appropriate authorities were under a legal obligation to consider his case for premature release under the ‘Guideline for Premature Release 2022’ passed by the Odisha Government.

The authorities, he said, failed to act in accordance with the rules, due to which his right to liberty, as enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution, was jeopardised.