New Delhi: The Odisha government Thursday told the Supreme Court that it has rejected a remission plea of Ravindra Pal alias Dara Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two minor sons in 1999.
“You take whatever grounds you want to take to challenge it. Amend your petition and then argue,” a bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi told the counsel appearing for Singh.
The bench noted that a copy of the order rejecting the remission plea has been supplied to Singh’s counsel.
“The counsel representing the petitioner (Singh) prays for and is allowed two weeks to file an appropriate amendment application,” the bench said, while posting the matter after three weeks.
Hearing the matter earlier, the top court had pulled up the Odisha government for not taking a decision on Singh’s remission plea.
Singh, 63, has been in jail for more than 25 years.
He approached the top court in 2024 seeking premature release on the ground that he had served over 24 years in jail and “repented” for his action taken in a fit of “youthful rage”.
A mob led by Singh attacked Staines and his two sons – 11-year-old Philip and eight-year-old Timothy – while they slept in their station wagon and set the vehicle on fire at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district on the intervening night of January 22-23, 1999.
Singh, the main accused in the triple murder, was convicted and sentenced to death by a CBI court in 2003.
The Orissa High Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment in 2005, and it was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011.
Staines and his wife Gladys worked with the Mayurbhanj Evangelical Missionary that cared for leprosy patients.
Gladys Staines, who was awarded the Padma Shri in 2005, had said she had forgiven the killers of her husband and sons, and held no bitterness against them.
