The Supreme Court on Wednesday told the Odisha government that it will not tolerate any further delay in dealing with the remission plea of Graham Staines’ murder convict Dara Singh, observing that if the Sentence Review Board (SRB) fails to take a decision in two weeks, the court will take a call.
The order further stated, “The SRB shall take a decision and apprise us by the next date of hearing. It was on this assurance that the matter was adjourned with an expectation that the matter would be decided in the meantime. In his petition, Singh mentioned his good conduct in jail and added that he repented his action. Staines’ sons were six and 10at the time of their murder.
This matter has been adjourned time and time again to enable the SRB to take a decision on the plea of remission of sentence awarded to the petitioner who is incarcerated for a period beyond 26 years. Singh, who is officially called Rabindra Kumar Pal, approached the top court in 2024. He was found guilty of burning alive the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Odisha in 1999. In August 2024, the top court entertained his plea for premature release and sought the response of the state government. Citing his age (62) and period of incarceration, he sought the benefit of the state’s premature release policy of April 19, 2022. Singh was convicted and sentenced to death by a trial court in Odisha in September 2003. The Orissa high court upheld his conviction in 2005 but commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. That order was finally confirmed by the Supreme Court in January 2011.
The state, represented by advocate PV Yogeswaran, told the court that the SRB, based on a letter from the Directorate of Prisons. is waiting for a report from the District Jail, Keonjhar, where Singh is lodged. The court told Yogeswaran that when the matter was last heard in July, the state indicated that SRB was in the process of taking a final decision.
Besides this case, Singh is also serving a life sentence in two other cases where the trial court convicted him in 2007, with confirmation by the high court in 2022 and by the Supreme Court in one case in 2023. During the entire period of over two decades, Singh claimed he had not been granted parole even once.
