New Delhi: The Odisha government has rejected the remission plea of Ravindra Pal alias Dara Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two minor sons, the state told the Supreme Court on Thursday.
A bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi took note of the August 31 order rejecting Singh’s plea and allowed his counsel two weeks to file an appropriate amendment application challenging the decision. The matter has been posted for hearing after three weeks.
At the outset, counsel appearing for Odisha informed the bench that the State Sentence Review Board (SSRB) had rejected Singh’s remission plea at a special meeting on August 31. The Supreme Court had earlier directed the SSRB to take a decision on the plea and apprise it of the outcome.
Singh, 63, has been lodged in Kendujhar district jail for more than 25 years. He had approached the apex court in 2024 seeking premature release, claiming that he had completed more than 24 years of actual imprisonment and had repented for his actions, which he described as a consequence of “youthful rage”.
The SSRB, however, said it was “not inclined to recommend his premature release at this stage” in view of certain facts and circumstances. The state also noted that his remission requests had earlier been rejected in 2016, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023, citing various grounds, including apprehension of communal disturbance and societal ramifications.
Singh was convicted by a CBI court in 2003 and sentenced to death for leading the attack on Staines and his sons, Philip, 11, and Timothy, 8, who were sleeping in a station wagon at Manoharpur village in Kendujhar district on the intervening night of January 22-23, 1999. The vehicle was set on fire during the attack.
The Orissa High Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment in 2005, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011.
In his plea, Singh had cited the Odisha government’s 2022 premature release guidelines, saying he had completed the qualifying period of 14 years without remission. He also invoked his right to liberty under Article 21 and assured the court that, if released, he would undertake “service-oriented actions” to contribute to society.
Staines and his wife, Gladys, were associated with the Mayurbhanj Evangelical Missionary, which worked with leprosy patients. Gladys, who received the Padma Shri in 2005, had publicly said she had forgiven her husband’s and sons’ killers.
