SC amends parts of Staines ruling
New Delhi, Jan. 25: The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a suo motu clarification on its judgement on the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, without citing any reason for ordering the amendments in two crucial paragraphs.
The first amendment made in paragraph 43 related to the conclusion upholding the Orissa High Court verdict converting life sentence of Dara Singh and the second correction was made in paragraph 47 discussing the issue of conversion.
The concluding sentence of paragraph 43 of the judgement pronounced by a bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan on January 21 read: “In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention (of a mob) was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely converting poor tribals to Christianity.
All these aspects have been correctly appreciated by the High Court and the death sentence has been modified into life imprisonment, with which we concur.”
The clarification order said this para should be replaced with “However, more than 12 years have elapsed since the act was committed, we are of the opinion that the life sentence awarded by the High Court need not be enhanced in view of the factual position discussed in the earlier paras.”
The concluding sentence of paragraph 47, stating “it is undisputed that 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,” was ordered to be substituted with “there is no justification for interfering in someone’s religious belief by any means.”
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