New Delhi, Jan. 21: The Supreme Court on Friday confirmed the life sentence to the two killers of Australian Christian missionary Grahm Staines and his two minor sons in Orissa exactly 11 years ago giving finality to the case but upheld the acquittal of 11 others while finding the CBI investigation “shoddy”.
A bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan also justified the Orissa High Court order converting the death sentence of Dara Singh into life imprisonment, saying the case did not fall within the “rarest of rare” parameters laid down by the apex court.
In fact, the CBI had not challenged the conversion of Dara Singh’s capital punishment into life imprisonment in the Supreme Court as the agency only had challenged the acquittal of the 11 other accused.
The other convict Mahendra Hembram was given life sentence by the High Court while letting off the 11 accused in a judgement passed in 2005 and the apex court upheld it.
Grahm Staines and his sons Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6, were burnt alive in a jeep by a mob on the intervening night of January 22 and 23, 1999 while attempting to escape from their residence.
Dara Singh and Hembram were opposed to Staines working with the tribal as they accused him of converting them into Christianity by “allurement”.
The apex court has recorded at least six versions of witness accounts.