Graham Staines killer files nomination in Orissa

The news of Rabindra Kumar Pal alias Dara Singh contesting election as an independent candidate from Orissa's Ghasipura assembly constituency has come a 'shocker' to the Christian community in India.

Dara Singh is convicted in the brutal murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and two of his minor sons in 1999.

Presently lodged in Keonjhar jail, Dara Singh submitted his papers to the sub-collector of Anandapur through an agent identified as Netrananda Mahanta.

A latest report meanwhile confirms that the authorities rejected the nomination paper. "Rabinda Kumar Pal's papers were rejected during scrutiny today," Sub-collector S C Mallick said.

Dara has about 12 criminal cases pending against him including killing of a Christian priest father Arul Doss.

In a press release, the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) expressed shock "by the decision of the political dispensations in India to field the killer of Graham Stuart Staines and his innocent children in the forthcoming election in Orissa."

"How is it that people who are under cloud and charged with constitutional felonies and criminal offenses are not in the dock, but in the seat of government? GCIC appeals that the law must be respected and take its course without fear or favour. Deviation from this will stultify the rule of law," the release said.

From the Catholic community, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India, expressed dismal over the nomination, which he said would divide and augment communal distrust.

"The founding fathers enshrined in our Constitution, articles to preserve the unity...multiethnicity and multilinguistic plurality of India, and we need leaders who are clean, who will work for communal harmony and work for the social uplifting of the people," he told the AsiaNews.

Dara, allegedly belonging to the Bajrang Dal, was awarded capital punishment by a district court which later commuted it to life imprisonment in May 2005.

Opposed to religious conversion, he and his associates on the night of 22 June 1999 set fire on the van in which Graham Staines and his children (10-year-old Philip and six-year-old Timothy) were sleeping.

In a similar case, last week, the Christian community in Orissa's communally sensitive Kandhamal was upset over the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) decision to field a main accused in the Kandhamal riots.

Manoj Pradhan, the alleged mastermind of 2008 Kandhamal violence, despite being booked in 10 cases that include seven murders, is contesting from G Udaygiri Assembly constituency

To this, All India Christian Council head John Dayal responded, "I was expecting that BJP would play the communal card in Kandhamal. Only the BJP can have the temerity to add salt to the wounds of the riot-hit people. BJP has no decency left."