New Delhi, january 21: The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the life sentence awarded to Dara Singh in the Graham Staines murder case.
Dara Singh is the main accused in the killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa’s Koenjhar district in January 1999.
On May 19, 2005, the Orissa High Court had commuted to life imprisonment the death penalty imposed by the Sessions Court on Dara Singh.
Today’s SC verdict came in response to a CBI plea for awarding the death sentence to Dara Singh.
The SC also upheld the life term awarded to another accused, Mahendra Hembram, in the case.
Like the Orissa HC, the SC too upheld the acquittal of 11 others who were awarded life terms by the trial court in the case.
A bench of justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan had on December 15, 2010, reserved its judgement after hearing at length the arguments of CBI’s counsel and Additional Solicitor General Vivek Tankha and counsel for the convicts.
Senior counsel KTS Tulsi and Ratnakar Dash, besides counsel Sibo Shankara Mishra, appeared for the 12 convicts.
Appearing for CBI, Tankha told the bench that Dara Singh deserved death sentence as the murders were committed in a most “diabolic and dastardly manner” which warrant exemplary punishment.
“It was not a simple conspiracy but a dastardly conspiracy in which three innocent hapless victims were beaten and burnt alive in a car,” he submitted.
Dara had filed an appeal challenging his conviction and the life sentence awarded to him. The appeals were admitted by the apex court in October 2005.
—PTI