SC asks Odisha to decide the premature release plea of Staines murderer in six weeks

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Odisha government to take a call on the plea for premature release filed by Ravindra Pal alias Dara Singh, who is serving life sentence for the murders of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two minor sons in 1999.

A Bench of Justices Manoj Misra and K.V. Viswanathan gave the State government six weeks to decide the convict’s plea for remission and report back to the apex court.

Sixty-one-year-old Singh said he has suffered 24 years of incarceration without remission and truly regretted his actions committed in a fit of “youthful rage”, which he blamed on bad karma.

“In the fervour of youth, fuelled by impassioned reactions to the brutal history of India, the petitioner’s psyche momentarily lost restraint,” his plea said.

He promised to “give back to the society” through “service-oriented actions”. He submitted that he had undergone more than the qualified period of sentence of 14 years under the April 19, 2022 remission policy in Odisha.

“The petitioner was never released on parole, even when his mother passed away. He could not perform her last rites,” he submitted.

A mob led by Singh attacked Staines and his two sons — 11-year-old Philip and 8-year-old Timothy — while they slept in their station wagon and then set the vehicle on fire in Manoharpur village of Keonjhar district on the intervening night of January 22-23, 1999.

Singh, the main accused in the triple murder, was convicted and sentenced to death by a CBI court in 2003. The Orissa High Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment in 2005. The decision of the High Court was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011. eom