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Staines’ murder: SC confirms life term to Dara
R Sedhuraman
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, January 21
Confirming the life sentence awarded to Dara Singh for burning to death Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons in Orissa in 1999, the Supreme Court today frowned upon religious conversions as well as killings that have a communal or caste angle.

A Bench comprising Justices P Sathasivam and BS Chauhan also endorsed the life term awarded to another convict, Mahendra Hembrom, and the acquittal of 12 others for want of evidence.

Staines and his sons, 10-year-old Philip and six-year-old Timothy, were killed by a mob of around 70 persons in the remote tribal village of Manoharpur on the night of January 22 by setting on fire their car while they were sleeping inside the vehicle. Staines was engaged in propagating and preaching Christianity.

In September 2003, the trial court had awarded death penalty to Dara Singh and life sentence to the other accused, but the Orissa High Court commuted the death sentence to life term and, citing lack of evidence, acquitted all other convicts, except Hembrom.

The SC accepted the HC view that the crime did not fall in the rarest of rare category to attract death penalty.

In the 70-page verdict, the Bench said taking the lives of persons belonging to another caste or religion “strikes at the very root of the orderly society” envisaged by the makers of the Constitution.

A few sentences later, the Bench also observed “there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of use of force, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other”.

Though the Bench has not elaborated on these remarks, it is clear that these are general in nature and have no bearing on the merits of the case.