New Delhi: The SC bowed to the hurt voiced by the Christian community and on Tuesday changed the reasons for awarding a life sentence to Dara Singh, convicted of killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons in 1999.
Instead of its earlier view that the crime was driven by a passion to teach Staines a lesson for converting poor tribals to his religion, the Bench said a lapse of 12 years since the incident was the reason for it agreeing with the Orissa HC decision to award Singh a life sentence. It also deleted another paragraph relating to the controversial issue of conversion by force and coercion on the flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.
A Bench comprising Justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan on its own issued the clarifications to its 76-page judgment pronounced on Friday. Christian organisations protested the paragraph recording the court's reason why it was not awarding death penalty to Dara Singh.
The court had earlier said: “In the case in hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity.”
The Bench ordered to replace it with — “However, more than 12 years has elapsed since the act was committed, we are of the opinion that the life sentence awarded by the HC need not be enhanced in view of the factual position discussed in earlier paragraphs.” The paragraph ordered to be deleted from the judgment read — “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.”
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