More than a quarter century after Australian missionary Graham Staines and his sons were burned alive, the prospect of Dara Singh’s release has stirred anxiety in Manoharpur, where memories of the killings remain raw
Nayam Marndi has long lost count of her own age, but the woman — now in her 70s — has not forgotten the horrific night of Jan 22-23, 1999. Sitting on the verandah of a neighbour’s house in Kacha Sahi of Manoharpur village, she points towards the spot, next to a church, where Graham Staines and his two sons, Philip (10) and Timothy (6), were burnt alive. “It happened exactly there,” she says, the memory of that night tightening her wrinkled face and moistening her eyes.
Twenty-seven years after the brutal killings, the case is back in the headlines after the Odisha government placed before the Supreme Court its 2022 remission policy, which allows remission for convicts whose death sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment after 25 years in jail. Dara Singh, convicted for the killing of Staines and his two sons, has already spent more than 26 years in prison.
Twenty-seven years after the brutal killings, the case is back in the headlines after the Odisha government placed before the Supreme Court its 2022 remission policy, which allows remission for convicts whose death sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment after 25 years in jail. Dara Singh, convicted for the killing of Staines and his two sons, has already spent more than 26 years in prison.