Rakesh Bhatnagar NEW DELHI
Almost 12 years after Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burnt alive in an Orissa village, key accused Rabindra Kumar Pal alias Dara Singh and Mahendra Hembram were jailed for life by the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday.
Staines and sons Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6, were burnt to death while they were sleeping in a van outside a church at Manoharpur in Keonjhar district on January 22, 1999.
A trial court awarded death to Dara and lesser sentences to his accomplices, mostly poor tribals, but the Orissa high court (HC) reduced his sentence to life.
Supreme Court confirmed the Orissa high court verdict and acquitted the tribals. CBI, which investigated the case, said Dara and others killed Staines to teach him a lesson for converting tribals to Christianity.
Dismissing Dara’s appeal against ‘Republic of India’, Supreme Court chided those who kill others because they belong to another caste or religion.
“In a country like ours where discrimination on the ground of caste or religion is taboo, taking lives of persons belonging to another caste or religion is bound to have a dangerous and reactive effect on society at large,” a bench of Justice P Sathasivam and Justice BS Chauhan observed.
Asserting that in a secular country, the state can’t have its own religion, they said it’s incumbent upon the state to “treat all religions and religious groups equally and with equal respect”.
Moreover, there’s no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by “use of force”, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.
These observations assume significance as states such as Rajasthan and Gujarat have enacted legislations to ban conversions. But president of India has refrained from giving nod to these laws.
