in the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons six years ago, and instead ordered life imprisonment, BosNewsLife learned Friday, May 20. Dara Singh had pleaded innocent and appealed against the lower court’s decision on September 15, 2003, to hang him and sentence 12 other men to life imprisonment.
Judges Sujit Burmon Roy and Laxmikant Mohapatra of the high court also acquitted 11 of the other people sentenced to a life term for burning alive Staines and his children in a remote village in the state.
NO REASON GIVEN
The judges gave no reason for commuting the death sentence on Singh and the acquittal of the others, news reports said. The judges retained the life sentence on another man convicted of involvement in the killings on January 22, 1999.
News of Thursday’s acquittals was expected to shock Indian Christians, who saw the killings as an example of growing Hindu extremism towards religious minorities. However Graham Staines’ brother John Staines told Reuters news agency that he had opposed the death penalty for Singh.
"I didn’t want to see Dara Singh executed," he was quoted as saying. "As far as the others being acquitted, there is one true judge and that is God. No matter what we do in this life if we don’t fulfill the things that God wants us to fulfill, or if we go against His Word, then the punishment comes at the end."
"A WELCOME JUDGMENT"
Singh’s lawyer, Bramhananda Panda, described the ruling as "a welcome judgment." Staines’ widow Gladys and her daughter, Esther, stayed on in India after the deaths and opened the Graham Staines Memorial Hospital for lepers in India in 2004 but have since returned to Australia.
The widow said she "had forgiven the killers." The Indian government reportedly conferred one of its top civilian awards on Gladys Staines in March this year for her work in Orissa. It was also an apparent attempt to ease tensions between Hindu’s and Christians.
Various church agencies and independent organizations have recorded hundreds of attacks this year against Christians in Orissa and elsewhere in India There are about 24 million Christians in India, just over 2 percent of India’s total 1.1 billion population, according church estimates. (BosNewsLife New Delhi Bureau Chief Vishal Arora contributed to this story)
