STAINS KILLING

TSI
FratricideDespite India's tryst with non-violence and pacifism, there remains a violent downside. Mass killings, communal carnages and caste killings have dominated its political and social landscape. TSI looks at the kaleidoscope of horror, from Assam to Gujarat.

STAINS OF A KILLING

The brutal muder of an Australian missionary in a remote village in Orissa was a national shameMore than eight years have elapsed since that dark winter night when Australian missionary Graham Stewart Staines and his two young sons were torched to death in a remote village in Orissa. The shocking news not only evoked worldwide condemnation but also flustered the existing governments, both at the centre and in the state, taking into account the sensitivity of the case—a foreigner, a minority, a missionary and social worker revered by the community, accusations of conversion and the questionable role of the Bajrang Dal in the crime.Staines, 58, who had made Baripada his home for more than three decades, was fluent in Oriya and Santhali (a tribal language) and had endeared himself to the local community in the district town of North Orissa and the neighbouring tribal villages. On that fateful night of January 22, 1999, Staines and his sons Philip (11) and Timothy (7) were in Manoharpur village in adjoining Keonjhar district attending an annual jungle camp, a gathering of Christians. It was while they were asleep in their jeep in front of the church that miscreants set the vehicle on fire and the three were charred to death. Initially, the Bajrang Dal was said to have masterminded the crime. However, a Commission of Inquiry headed by Justice D.P. Wadhwa of the Supreme Court ruled out the involvement of the Bajrang Dal, although the accused and his associates were known to be active supporters of the outfit.Dara Singh, the prime accused in the case was arrested a few months later. However, Staines’ wife had strongly denied the conversion charges saying, “My husband was never into conversions. All he did was to spread the message of the Lord”.Currently serving a life sentence in Baripada jail, Dara Singh was earlier awarded a death sentence by a trial court in Bhubaneswar in September 2003. This sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment by the Orissa High Court in May 2005. The bench maintained that “there is absolutely no evidence on record that due to individual act of Dara Singh alone the three or any of them died”. Recently, the district court in Mayurbhanj has sentenced him to another life term for killing a Catholic priest, Father Arul Doss, in September 1999. Meanwhile, Graham’s widow, Gladys Staines, spends time between India and Australia where her daughter Esther is studying. While silently mourning the loss of her husband and two children, she has accepted their death as the will of God, and as for the killers, she maintains, “With God’s help I have been able to forgive them”. Dhrutikant mohanty