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Court tells Odisha to decide Dara Singh remission
Times of India··20 Aug
On 19 August 2026, the Supreme Court told Odisha to decide Dara Singh's remission plea. He is serving life for the 1999 killing of Graham Staines and his two sons. Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi listed the case for 2 September. The Bench said if the State Sentence Review Board did not decide, the court would.
Prism
What It Means For You
- If you follow remission law, Odisha's Sentence Review Board now has until 2 September to decide Dara Singh's plea or the Supreme Court said it will decide itself.
- Anyone tracking this 1999 case can note the convict has been in prison for more than 26 years and has been rejected by five earlier review committees.
- If you are waiting on a state board file, the court recorded that a Kendujhar jail report was still missing on the August hearing date.
What's Happening
- The Bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi adjourned Rabindra Kumar Pal v. State of Odisha after the state failed to place a board decision.
- Counsel for Odisha relied on a prisons-directorate letter instead of a Sentence Review Board outcome.
- The next listing is 2 September, with a direction that the board take a decision and inform the court.
What The Remission Plea And The 1999 Case Record
- Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt in a jeep at Manoharpur in Keonjhar district on the night of 22-23 January 1999.
- Singh, a Bajrang Dal member, moved the Supreme Court in July 2024. His petition, filed through advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain, says he regrets the act and has been granted parole in the past.
- OdishaBytes reported the prisons letter also sought an antecedents report from Uttar Pradesh, the state Singh originally hails from.
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