Christians welcome modification of Staines murder verdict
By IANSTuesday, January 25, 2011
BHUBANESWAR - Christian organisations Tuesday welcomed the Supreme Court’s modification of a portion of its verdict in the Graham Staines murder case.
President of the Bangalore-based Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) Sajan K. George thanked the court for setting the record straight sue motto in the right perspective.
“We welcome the modification,” George told IANS over phone from Bangalore.
Modifying the judgment Tuesday, the apex court bench of Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice B.S. Chauhan said it was deleting the portion which read that the guilty, Dara Singh, and his accomplice wanted to teach Staines a lesson for his conversion activities.
The bench said the use of words “by use of force” is replaced with “by any means”.
“Without modification, the verdict was seen by many to be liable to misinterpretation”, George said.
Many observers had pointed out that by implication it justified the killings citing the Australian missionary’s religious activities.
“This was history-making that the Supreme Court modified the verdict suo motto. That makes everybody happy. We welcome this,” Christian leader and president of Orissa Minority Forum Swarupananda Patra told IANS.
The court Jan 21 said it was not interfering with the Orissa High Court judgment which had commuted Dara Singh’s death sentence to life imprisonment because the accused in the case have already been in jail for 12 years and there is no ground for an enhancement.
