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हिन्दी 
Bhubaneswar: Dara Singh alias Rabindra Kumar Pal, who has been in jail for the last 24 years over his conviction in the murder of Australian missionary Graham Stewart Staines and his two minor sons, may have to spend more time behind bars with the Odisha government deferring a decision on his release.
The state sentence review board which met on May 17 in Bhubaneswar to decide on the premature release of life convicts as per the guidelines issued by the state government in 2022, deferred its decision on his release despite recommendation by the authorities in Keonjhar prison, where he is lodged, as well as the district authorities.
“The Board does not feel proper to recommend the release and suggested deferment of the case to call for further report from the district administration,” said a person familiar with the issue. “His name was among the 86 convicts that were recommended for release by different jail authorities. However, the state sentence review board recommended for release of only 46 persons and rejected the names of others including Dara Singh.” All the 46 persons whose cases were recommended for premature release are murder convicts who have served anything between 9 and 20 years in prison.
Of the 39 convicts whose cases were rejected by the state sentence review board, many were shown to be capable of committing further crimes while in case of Singh, 61, no such reasons were shown except that he was convicted in three murder cases in which he killed five people.
State director general of prisons Sushant Nath, who attended the state sentence review board meeting on May 28, refused to comment on the decision. However, one person who attended the meeting, said the decision was more to do with sheer timing of celebration of BJP government’s first anniversary next month than anything else. “The government does not want a controversy over release of Dara at this point of time when the party and the government are geared up to celebrate the first anniversary. Apart from that there is no other pressing reason,” he said.
Singh, a resident of Kokar village in Auriya district of Uttar Pradesh, has been in jail since 2000 after his arrest by police. He was first given death sentence by a CBI court in Bhubaneswar in 2003, which was commuted to life sentence in May 2005 by Orissa high court. The Supreme Court upheld the life sentence in January 2011. As per police, he came to Odisha along with his friend Chitaranjan Das alas Bapu Das with whom he worked in a shoe factory in New Delhi. After getting sacked from the job, he came to Maliposi village of Keonjhar at the suggestion of Dipu Das brother of Bapu Das. Dipu Das was initially an accused in the Staines’ murder case, but courts acquitted him. In Keonjhar, he worked in the grocery shop of Das’ father and did odd jobs such as teaching Hindi at the Maliposi school before becoming a zealot attacking cow traders and protesting proselytisation of tribals in Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj districts.
The Supreme Court in July 9, last year, issued notice to the Odisha government on the plea for Singh’s premature release. Singh said he believes in the Karmic philosophy, and in order to cure the effects of bad Karma he has gained through his actions, he prayed for an opportunity to reform his character. In his plea, filed through advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, Singh said he had spent over 24 years in incarceration and “repented” the consequences of his action taken in a fit of “youthful rage”.
Singh, 61, in his petition said he had undergone more than the qualified period of sentence of 14 years under the April 19, 2022 policy and spent 24 years of actual imprisonment without remission. The April 2022 policy of Odisha home department on premature release of prisoners says every convicted prisoner whether male or female undergoing sentence of life imprisonment and covered by the provisions of Section 433 A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 shall be eligible to be considered for premature release from the prison immediately after serving out the sentence of 14 years of actual imprisonment i.e. without the remissions.
“…it is clarified that upon completion of fourteen years in prison by itself will not entitle a convict to be released automatically from the prison and the State Sentence Review Board shall have the discretion to release a convict at an appropriate time and cases considering the circumstances in which the crime was committed and the other factors, namely: –
(a) whether the convict has lost his potential for committing crime considering his overall conduct in jail during the fourteen years incarceration;
(b) the possibility of reclaiming the convict as a useful member of the society; and
(c) Socio-economic condition of the convict’s family…”
Dara Singh in his submission before the apex court said he has never been released on parole and even when his mother passed away, he could not perform her last rites as he was not allowed to be released on parole. “The petitioner acknowledges and deeply regrets the transgressions perpetrated more than two decades ago. In the fervour of youth, fuelled by impassioned reactions to the brutal history of India, the petitioner’s psyche momentarily lost restraint,” Dara Singh’s lawyer Vishnu Shakar Jain said in his plea.
Dara Singh’s hopes were raised when Mahendra Hembram, 50, who served life sentence with him in Keonjhar jail walked out of prison last month after serving 25 years in prison in the Staines murder case. The State Sentence Review Board had ordered Hembram’s release because of good behaviour.
