NEW DELHI: “Don’t try to dodge us” was the terse warning Supreme Court issued to Odisha govt, which has been skirting the issue of Dara Singh’s remission plea over the last few months and refrained from revealing its stand to the court on Wednesday.“You take a decision, whichever way you want. If you do not take a decision, then we will,” the bench told state govt, posting hearing for Sept 2.Singh was part of a mob which set fire to Australian missionary Graham Staines’s vehicle in 1999, killing him and his two sons, Philip (10) and Timothy (6), in Keonjhar, Odisha. Sentenced to death, later commuted to life term , Singh has been in jail for 26 years.A bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi expressed its anguish over State Sentence Review Board not having made a decision yet, noting that hearing in the case has been adjourned multiple times to allow the state to take a call in the matter.Appearing for the state, advocate P V Yogeswaran placed before the bench a letter written by the prison authority stating that it had not received a report from district jail, Keonjhar.But the bench was not convinced and said, “We are not concerned about who is communicating what. We cannot tolerate this avoidance of decision.”
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Singh was sentenced to death by a trial court in 2003. In 2005, Odisha high court commuted death penalty to life imprisonment, which was confirmed by SC in 2011.The court said, “This matter has been adjourned time and again to enable the respondents to take a decision on the plea of remission of sentence awarded to the petitioner who is incarcerated for a period exceeding 26 years. It appears that when the matter was adjourned last, the State Sentence Review Board was in the process of taking a decision on the petitioner’s plea. Based on that, the matter was adjourned. Today, the learned counsel for the respondent has placed before us a letter of the Directorate of Prison and Correctional Services addressed to the counsel, wherein he stated that the report from the district jail, Keonjhar, is yet to be received. We are not informed of the sentence review board’s decision. List this matter on 2 Sept. The review board should take apprise us of their decision.”
