Staines killer says he is "innocent," seeks release from apex court

Dara Singh, alias Rabindra Kumar Pal, who caught the glare of the media in 1999 by killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor children, has asserted his "innocence" before the Supreme Court of India, urging the apex court to release him on bail because at the time of his arrest, he was "the only source of income for his family" and he has an "elderly mother to look after."

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, Orissa, sentenced Singh to death. The court also awarded life imprisonment to 12 others. Singh is 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 also moved the Supreme Court, challenging the verdict of the Orissa High Court.

The matter is still pending in the apex court.

In his appeal before the Supreme Court, Singh has claimed that he was "totally innocent" and described his sentence as "unjust because it was based on circumstantial evidence and hearsay."

"[He] says he wants to look after his elderly mother and this is admirable but he did not think about the mother whose two small sons he killed when he set the car on fire. In any case, I consider him to be a man consumed by the ideology of hatred propagated by the Hindutva mentality," said Babu K. Varghese, a Christian, who wrote a book entitled 'Burnt Alive,' as a tribute to the life and work of the slain missionary. "The death sentence should be passed not on him but on the culture of hate that permeates our society. Certainly Singh is asking for pity but he forgets the evil he committed and the pity he did not have."

What is needed is "transformation of Dara Singh, who should take his victim as an example [he served Indian lepers for 34 years] and become an instrument of love and tolerance. Gladys and Esther Staines, the missionary's wife and daughter, told me they continue to pray for this," he said, noting that Gladys had forgiven Dara Singh "because in forgiveness, there is no bitterness, only hope."

Some time back, Christian intellectual and social reformer, Vishal Mangalwadi, had 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."

"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 realization 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 realized 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.