The Supreme Court on Wednesday, August 19, gave the Odisha Sentence Review Board one final opportunity to decide on the premature release plea of Dara Singh, alias Rabindra Kumar Pal, who is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons.
A Bench of Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Vijay Bishnoi directed the Board to take a decision by September 2 and inform the Court. The Bench orally warned that if no decision is taken, it would itself decide the plea.
The Orissa State Sentence Review Board must immediately decide on the petitioner’s premature release plea, or this Court will exercise its authority to issue the decision itself. Clear and decisive action is required regardless of inter-departmental communication methods. The Court expects an explicit ruling without further delay.
At the previous hearing, the Court had directed the Odisha government to decide Singh’s plea by August 19. However, the Bench was informed on Wednesday that no decision had been taken.
The counsel initially sought a passover and later placed before the Court a letter from the Directorate General of Prisons stating that certain reports, including information regarding Singh’s antecedents, were awaited from Uttar Pradesh. The Court questioned why such correspondence was being relied upon when the decision of the Sentence Review Board was still pending.
The Court noted that the matter had been repeatedly adjourned to enable the authorities to decide the remission plea, while Singh has already spent more than 26 years in custody.
Singh was sentenced to death by the trial court in 2003. The Orissa High Court commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in 2005, a decision subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011.
Singh has sought premature release, contending that he has served more than 25 years in prison and is eligible for consideration under the State’s remission policy. Represented by Advocates Hari Shankar Jain and Vishnu Shankar Jain, he has pleaded that the crime was committed in a “fit of youthful rage” and that he is now repentant.
He has relied on the reformative theory of punishment and the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision granting premature release to convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
The murders occurred on January 22, 1999, at Manoharpur village in Odisha’s Keonjhar district, when a mob led by Singh set fire to Graham Staines’ vehicle while he and his sons, Philip, aged 10, and Timothy, aged six, were sleeping inside.
The matter will now be heard on September 2, by which date the Sentence Review Board has been directed to take and communicate its decision.
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