Dara Singh was involved in killing 35-year-old priest Arul Doss on September 1, 1999, in Orissa’s Mayurbhanj district said District Judge Sachidanand Sinha. Three other co-defendants, Jadunath Mohanto, Cheemma Ho and Rajkishore Mohanto, also received a life sentence for their apparent role in the murder, while 17 others were acquitted.
Prosecutors said Doss was chased and killed by the accused with arrows, while attending a function. Doss was a priest of south Indian descent who had been working in the state’s Mayurbhanj district.
Eights months earlier, 58-year-old Australian missionary Graham Staines and his children Philip, 10, and Timothy, 8, were killed in a remote village in Orissa. Investigators said that the ehicle Staines and his sons were traveling in was set alight by a mob outside a church at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district on January 22, 1999.
SENTENCED TO DEATH
Singh was originally sentenced to death over that incident, but in 2005 his sentence was commuted to life in prison after a court ruled there was no evidence his actions alone were directly responsible for the deaths.
Radical Hindu radical groups had complained that tribal people in Orissa were being forced to convert to Christianity, charges Christian workers have denied. Singh was arrested in early 2000.
Trial observers said however that an official inquiry into the Staines case said there was no evidence to suggest that organized Hindu groups were behind the killings. Staines had spent 30 years working with leprosy patients in Orissa, and his widow, Gladys, stayed in India until July 2004, carrying on his work. "I am terribly upset, but not angry. My husband loved Jesus Christ who has taught us to forgive our enemies," she said.
GROWING TENSIONS
Singh’s trial came amid growing religious tensions in Orissa on Saturday, September 22, amid reports that two nuns in Mayurbhanj district were detained for allegedly making two non-Christian girls sing hymns in praise of Christ.
Sister Mary, 60, and Sister Prema, 63, were accused of attempting “to forcibly convert the girls” studying at Bijay Sadan, a Catholic residential school in Baghamara, BosNewsLife learned. Following the arrests, Father Isaac of the Catholic Diocese in Balasore, rushed to Mayurbhanj, saying the charges were "cooked up". The arrests were made after Sarojini Murmu, 12, and
Anjana Behera, 10, apparently complained that they were "compelled to participate" in prayers against their wish. They also accused the nuns of "physically and mentally torturing" them when they refused to sing the hymns.
Human rights groups have expressed concerns about what they see as growing pressure from Hindu militants on Christian workers in Orissa and other areas of India. Christians comprise less than three percent of India’s mainly Hindu population of over 1.1 billion people.
