Investigation (CBI) which seeks the death penalty for a Hindu militant on charges of involvement in killing an Australian missionary and his two sons over 5 years ago, the BosNewsLife Orissa Bureau learned Thursday October 20.
The CBI, the premier police investigation agency of India, is challenging an Orissa High Court order to reduce the death sentence awarded to Dara Singh into one of life imprisonment.
Singh has been accussed of leading a Hindu mob which killed Australian missionary Graham Steines and his two sons Philip and Timothy on January 22, 1999. They were burnt to death as they slept inside their station wagon in Manoharpur village of Orissa’s Keonjhar district, the prosecution said.
EVIDENCE "DISREGARDED"
The CBI told the Supreme Court on Wednesday, October 19, that the Orissa High Court had "disregarded the entire evidence while acquitting 11 of the accused and reducing the death sentence slapped on Singh," according to published statements. The court only upheld a life sentence for one other militant, identified as Mahendra Hembram, court documents showed.
However "when all the accused were identified by eye witnesses in the identification parade, there was no reason to disbelieve their evidence," and overturn Singh’s death sentence and aqcuit most militants, the CBI said. But the Supreme Court warned CBI that it would "only see the reasons given for acquittal by the High Court" and stressed it was for the agency "to show how [that court ruling] was against the law."
OVERULED DEATH SENTENCE
The Orissa High Court on May 19 had set aside Dara Singh’s death sentence, whose real name is Ravinder Pal Singh, for the murder of Staines and his two minor sons Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6, but had upheld life imprisonment on him for being part of an unlawful assembly that burnt them alive.
The murders were condemned internationally and increased fears of persecution among the state’s Christian minority and church leaders. Hindu extremists have attacked several churches and Christians since the 1999 murders.
