Christian intellectual pleads for pardoning Staines' killer

Christian intellectual and social reformer, Vishal Mangalwadi, has pleaded for pardoning the murderer of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons, hoping that the killer would realize his mistake and become an "apostle of peace."

Speaking on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the crime, Mangalwadi, who has authored several books, said that he was "hopeful of a real change and transformation in the life of Dara Singh, who is a victim of Hindutva, an ideology of hate."

Led by Dara Singh, a violent Hindu mob burnt alive Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa in January 1999.
Singh alleged that Staines was converting local tribals and Hindus to Christianity.

In September 2003, the District and Sessions Court of Khurda sentenced Singh to death. The court also awarded life imprisonment to 12 others. Singh was believed to be closely associated with the Hindu radical outfit Bajrang Dal, an affiliate of the Hindu nationalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council).

However, in May 2005, the Orissa High Court commuted his death sentence to one that of life imprisonment. Later the same year, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) appealed against the High Court ruling in the Supreme Court. Dara Singh has also moved the Supreme Court, challenging the verdict of the Orissa High Court.
The matter is still pending in the apex court.

"The killing of the Staines was truly 'a crime that belongs to the world's inventory of black deeds' as the then Indian President – had said, but Singh did not commit the crime out of personal malice. It was a result of the ideological and religious hatred spread by the numerous Hindutva organisations," Mangalwadi, who was in New Delhi for the Graham Staines Memorial Writers' Conference, January 19, said.

"Law alone does not matter, as there is a need for realisation among those who propagate the Hindutva ideology that the spirituality of hate is against the universal values of love and tolerance," he explained, adding that if Singh realised that violence in the name of religion is an "untenable evil," he could also become an "apostle of peace" by propagating love instead of hate with the same zeal.

Graham Staines lived and worked in Mayurbhanj for 34 years serving those afflicted with leprosy. He provided medicine to the patients and ran vocational programmes.

After the murder, the widow of the slain missionary, Gladys Staines, stunned the world by saying that she had forgiven the killers of her husband and children. She is keeping alive the mission of her husband by helping leprosy patients at the leprosy home in Orissa.

Besides the killing of the Australian missionary, Dara Singh, alias Rabindra Kumar Pal, is also the prime accused in the murder of Arul Doss, priest of Jambani church in Mayurbhanj district. Fr. Doss had succumbed to arrow–shot injuries when Dara and 21 others allegedly raided the church in 1999 a few months before the murder of Graham Staines.

Dara Singh was also an accused in two other murder cases that includes the August 26, 1999 incident at Padiabeda weekly market in Mayurbhanj district where a Muslim garment trader, Sk. Rehman was burnt alive and the August 16, 1999 incident at Kendumundi in the same district in which a helper of a truck engaged in the transportation of cattle was killed. However in November 2006, Baripada District and Sessions Judge Sribatsa Pradhan acquitted Dara Singh and 12 others in the latter case, citing insufficient evidence.