Supreme Court Warns Odisha Govt: Decide Dara Singh’s Remission Plea or Secretary Will Be Summoned

The Supreme Court on September 8, put the Odisha government on notice, saying it would summon state officials if the Sentence Review Board kept sitting on a remission plea filed by Dara Singh, convicted in the 1999 killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons.

A Bench of Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Vijay Bishnoi was hearing the matter when the State's counsel sought a four-week adjournment, citing the Advocate-on-Record's illness. The judges were clearly in no mood to grant it.

Background Of The Case

Graham Staines, along with his sons Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6, died on 22 January 1999 when a mob set fire to the vehicle they were sleeping in at Manoharpur village in Odisha's Keonjhar district. Dara Singh, also known as Rabindra Kumar Pal, was held to be the main accused. A trial court sentenced him to death in 2003. The Orissa High Court commuted this to life imprisonment two years later, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2011.

Singh has now approached the top court seeking premature release, arguing that he is past 60, has spent close to a quarter century behind bars, and has since reformed. His plea, filed through advocates Hari Shankar Jain and Vishnu Shankar Jain, describes the crime as an act committed in youthful anger, and points to the Court's 2022 order in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, where convicts were released on similar reformative grounds.

This was not the first time the Bench had flagged the delay. On August 19, it had already directed Odisha's Sentence Review Board to take a call on the plea, one way or the other. Finding little movement since then, Justice Misra did not mince words.

"Why are you lingering like this? Take a decision, accept or reject," he told the State's counsel.

When the counsel admitted he had no instructions and suggested the matter be taken up again on September 17, Justice Bishnoi remarked, "You can't go on like this."

Justice Misra pointed out that the case had been dragging on for nearly two years and made the Court's patience clear:

"We are not adjourning. Seek instructions, or else we will summon your Secretary."

The Bench listed the matter for September 17 and directed the Odisha government to place its decision on Singh's remission plea before the Court by then.