Odisha Tells Supreme Court It Has Rejected Dara Singh's Remission Plea
Odisha has rejected the remission plea of Dara Singh, serving life for the 1999 Graham Staines murders. The Supreme Court gave him two weeks to amend his petition.
The Odisha government has turned down a remission plea filed by Ravindra Pal, better known as Dara Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the 1999 killings of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two young sons. The state conveyed its decision to the Supreme Court on Thursday.
A Bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi recorded that a copy of the rejection order had been handed to Singh's counsel. The court allowed the petitioner two weeks to file an amendment application so that he may challenge the decision on whatever grounds he chooses, and posted the matter for a hearing after three weeks.
The direction came after the top court had earlier reprimanded the Odisha government for sitting on Singh's plea without arriving at a decision.
Singh, 63, has spent more than 25 years in prison. He moved the Supreme Court in 2024 seeking premature release, citing the length of his incarceration and stating that he had repented for an act committed in a fit of youthful rage.
He was the main accused in the attack on Staines and his sons, Philip, 11, and Timothy, eight. The family was asleep in their station wagon at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district when a mob led by Singh set the vehicle on fire on the intervening night of January 22 and 23, 1999.
A CBI court convicted Singh in 2003 and handed him the death penalty. The Orissa High Court commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in 2005, a decision the Supreme Court upheld in 2011.
Staines and his wife Gladys were associated with the Mayurbhanj Evangelical Missionary, which ran a home for leprosy patients. Gladys Staines, honoured with the Padma Shri in 2005, has said she forgave those who killed her husband and sons and harboured no bitterness towards them.