Thaindian News

New Delhi, March 9 (IANS) Rabindra Kumar Pal alias Dara Singh - a convict in the 1999 killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two children in Orissa - has moved the Supreme Court seeking a review of its judgment upholding life imprisonment awarded to him and the subsequent changes in the observations made in the verdict.

Dara Singh and his accomplices set on fire a vehicle in which Staines and his two children, Philip and Timothy, were sleeping Jan 22, 1999 in Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district.

He has sought the review of the apex court judgment of Jan 21 and Jan 25, 2011, delivered by the bench of Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice B.S. Chauhan.

The court said in its Jan 21 judgment: “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of ‘use of force’, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.”

This portion of the judgment was altered by the court in its order Jan 25.

Dara Singh’s review petition said that it was an unprecedented procedure where a judgment was altered without issuing notice to the concerned parties.

The petition seeking the review said that “such alteration of the judgment pronounced in the open court without notice to the parties, without following the principle of natural justice, without either parties having filed any application to do so is in gross disregard of the provision of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and the Supreme Court Rules, 1966….”

Dara Singh was awarded death sentence by a trial court Sep 22, 2003. The Orissa High Court set aside the trial court’s verdict and reduced his death sentence to life imprisonment.

The verdict of the high court was upheld by the apex court Jan 21, 2011.