The Supreme Court on Friday confirmed the life sentence to the two killers of Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons in Orissa 11 years ago, but upheld the acquittal of 11 others while finding the CBI investigation “shoddy”.
A bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan also justified the Orissa high court order converting the death sentence of Dara Singh into life imprisonment, saying the case did not fall within the “rarest of rare” parameters laid down by the Supreme Court.
In fact, the CBI had not challenged the conversion of Dara Singh’s capital punishment into life imprisonment in the top court as the agency only had challenged the acquittal of the 11 other accused. The other convict Mahendra Hembram was given life sentence by the HC while letting off the 11 accused in 2005 and the top court upheld it.
Graham Staines and his sons Philip (10) and Timothy (6) were torched alive in a jeep by a mob on the intervening night of January 22 and January 23, 1999, while they were attempting to escape when attacked by the mob. Dara Singh and Hembram were opposed to Staines working with tribal as they accused him of converting them into Christianity by “allurement”.
Since the entire case revolved around conversion, the top court had a san advice to all those doing charitable working among different religious groups not to do anything which might vitiate the religious atmosphere even if their intentions were unsuspected.