25 August 1999
Sydney Morning Herald
An Indian judicial inquiry into the brutal murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons ignored evidence that the killer belonged to a group linked to the ruling Hindu nationalists, an influential human rights organisation has charged.
The report of a five-month investigation headed by Judge Devinder Pratap Wadhwa of the Supreme Court, released earlier this month, concluded that the incineration of Dr Staines and his two young sons, Tim and Philip, was not carried out at the behest of any group or organisation.
But in a scathing critique of the finding, the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC) alleges that:
* The predominant evidence before the commission was that the alleged organiser of the killings, Rabindra Kumar Pal, alias Dara Singh, was a member of the Hindu extremist group Bajrang Dal and the ruling-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee;
* The judge’s finding was “dramatically inconsistent” with that of his own counsel in giving blanket absolution to Hindu nationalist organisations;
* The commission was politically partisan in blaming the Government of the eastern state of Orissa, run by the Congress Party, for allowing the murders to be committed.
“The commission has produced a report that is extremely selective and political in the manner in which it approached evidence placed before it,” the SAHRDC report states.
A spokesman for the Australian High Commission in New Delhi said its staff were studying the Wadhwa report. A spokesman for the Foreign Minister, Mr Downer, said yesterday it would be inappropriate for the Federal Government to comment at this stage.
But Western diplomats privately expressed exasperation at the failure of the authorities to apprehend the main accused seven months after the triple murder on January 23, when a mob of about 30 people set fire to a jeep in which Dr Staines and his two sons were sleeping in the village of Manoharpur.
“They should get on with the job of catching Dara Singh, because he’s the one who can answer the question of whether he acted alone or at the direction of political forces,” one diplomat said.
In the 13 months of the Vajpayee Government there has been an unprecedented spate of attacks on Indian Christians, culminating in the attack on the Staines family.
“On the eve of a national election, the report of Justice Wadhwa sends a highly political message,” the SAHRDC report says.
“The report does nothing to reassure minorities that their rights will be protected in accordance with international law and the Constitution of India. Instead, the Hindu Fundamentalist instigators and perpetrators of anti-Christian attacks get away with it.”
Dr Staines’s widow, Mrs Gladys Staines, recently returned to their base in Baripada town, Orissa, and her application to stay in India to run the leprosy home her husband founded is pending with the Vajpayee Government.
The Wadhwa Commission found that Dara Singh had organised the mob which set fire to the jeep and blocked the Staines’s frantic efforts to escape the inferno.
* Indian police had stopped a protest march by the United Christians Forum demanding further investigation of the murder of Dr Staines and his sons, a church official said yesterday. No reason had been given for stopping the march, Agence France-Presse reported.