BHUBANESWAR: A CBI court on Wednesday acquitted Buddhadeb Naik who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the brutal killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons in 1999.
The central agency had identified Naik as an associate of Rabindra Kumar Pal (Dara Singh), the primary perpetrator of the attack. Naik was accused of participating in the mob violence that trapped the family inside the vehicle and burnt them alive on the night of January 22, 1999 when they were asleep in their station wagon at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district.
After the gruesome incident, Naik went into hiding for 20 years. The CBI finally tracked and arrested him from Mayurbhanj district in September 2019. As Naik was apprehended decades after the initial trials concluded, his case was designated to undergo independent judicial evaluation under a separate trial process.
“During the trial in ADJ-IV-cum Special CBI Court, Naik denied knowing Dara Singh or Graham Staines. The 19 witnesses examined during the trial did not testify that Naik was present on the spot when the crime took place,” said his counsel, Bana Mohanty.
Singh, the main accused in the triple murder, was convicted and sentenced to death by a CBI court in 2003. The Orissa High Court, however, commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment in 2005 which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011.
Earlier, the Supreme Court had also asked the Odisha government to decide the remission plea of Singh. On September 17 this year, the Odisha government informed the apex court that its State Sentence Review Board rejected the premature release (remission) plea of Singh.