India Supreme Court To Hear Dara Singh Remission Plea In Graham Staines Murder Case

According to the BBC, India’s Supreme Court is due to decide on a petition from Dara Singh, also known as Rabindra Kumar Pal, seeking release from prison after serving a life sentence for the 1999 killing of Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons in Odisha. Singh filed the remission plea in July 2024, saying he had spent more than 25 years in jail, had behaved well, and regretted the crimes. The court has already asked the state government to take a position on the request, but officials have not yet done so. At a hearing on 19 August, authorities said the Sentence Review Board was still waiting for paperwork and sought an adjournment. The bench said it was frustrated by repeated delays and warned it would decide the matter if the board did not act by 2 September. Singh has been in jail since his arrest in 2000. He was sentenced to death in 2003, but that punishment was later commuted to life imprisonment, and the Supreme Court upheld the sentence in 2011. He was also convicted in 2007 in two other attacks on religious minorities in 1999, including the killing of Catholic priest Arul Das and Muslim garment trader Shaikh Rahaman. Reports that Singh could be freed have unsettled some members of India’s Christian community. Graham Staines’ widow, Gladys, said she had forgiven Singh, while human rights and Christian activist John Dayal said remission after decades in prison is not unusual in India, but noted that anxiety among minorities in Odisha remains high because of the state’s history of anti-Christian violence.