BHUBANESWAR: The State Sentence Review Board (SSRB) of the Odisha government has rejected the plea for premature release of Bajrang Dal activist Rabindra Kumar Pal alias Dara Singh, serving life imprisonment for the ghastly murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons in 1999.
The decision was taken at a special meeting of the Board on August 31, chaired by additional chief secretary (Home) Hemant Sharma and attended by five other members.
SSRB held that district authorities of Keonjhar, where the triple-murder took place in 1999 and Singh is imprisoned, had in March last year given a conditional recommendation, stating that he may be prematurely released, while imposing certain conditions to maintain social harmony.
The Board held that the report of the district authorities lacked specific recommendations and was inconclusive. It stated that it was not inclined to recommend Singh’s remission plea on various grounds, including societal ramifications which could lead to communal disturbances.
The decision came ahead of the next hearing of the Supreme Court on September 17. The court had, on September 8, taken strong exception to the inaction of the state government on the matter and refused to grant more time for a decision.
The 63-year-old Singh in his petition pleaded for premature release from prison as he had already spent more than 25 years in jail.
Singh, who hails from Uttar Pradesh but settled in Odisha’s Keonjhar district, is currently serving life imprisonment for burning to death Staines (then 58) and his two minor sons — Philip and Timothy — when they were sleeping at a church in Keonjhar in the intervening night of January 22-23, 1999.
Singh, the main accused in the triple-murder case, was sentenced to capital punishment in 2003. The Orissa High Court later commuted his death sentence to life in 2005, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011.