Graham Staines Murder Case: SC Modifies Verdict

Legal News India: The Supreme Court of India modified a part of the Graham Staines murder case judgment. The SC bench, comprising Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice B.S. Chauhan, said that it deleted the segment of the verdict which read that Dara Singh (the guilty) and his accomplice killed Staines in an attempt to teach him a lesson for his activities of conversion. The bench claimed that the words, “by use of force”, is to be replaced with “by any means”.

Last week, the Supreme Court of India endorsed its decision of awarding life sentence to Dara Singh for the murder of Graham Staines and his sons in 1999. The CBI had demanded death sentence for Dara Singh who had links with the Hindu right-wing group Bajrang Dal. 

Staines and his two sons were burnt alive in Keonjhar, Orissa, in 1999. Graham Staines was a missionary from Australia who worked with leprosy patients for 30 years. On a January night, when Staines was sleeping with both his sons in a car, a mob of 50 people from Manoharpur village set the vehicle on fire. The family tried to escape but the mob prevented them from doing so.