Dara Singh is the name under which Rabindra Kumar Pal, a man from Uttar Pradesh who had settled in the tribal districts of northern Orissa, was convicted of five murders committed in three separate attacks in 1999. On the night of January 22 to 23, 1999, he led a mob that set fire to a station wagon parked outside a small church in the village of Manoharpur, in Keonjhar district. Inside were Graham Staines, an Australian missionary who had worked with leprosy patients in the region for more than 30 years, and his sons Philip, about 10, and Timothy, about 6. All three died. In August 1999 he attacked and killed Sheikh Rahaman, a Muslim garment trader, at a weekly market. In September 1999 he was one of a group that killed Father Arul Doss, a Catholic priest, at the village of Jambani.
The Staines killings caused an outcry in India and abroad and became part of a long national argument about religious conversion, Hindu nationalist groups and the safety of religious minorities. A judicial commission inquired into them; the federal Central Bureau of Investigation prosecuted them; and the case passed through a death sentence, a commutation, a Supreme Court judgment whose wording the court itself revised within days, and, from 2024, a legal fight over whether he should be released early.
The fullest account of Pal's background published in 1999 comes from Outlook magazine, which drew on the investigation reports placed before the inquiry commission. It said he was born in Kakur Bujurg village, in what is now Auraiya district in Uttar Pradesh, failed his first-year intermediate examinations, and moved to Delhi in 1981, where he worked at a Bata shoe factory. In 1987, the magazine reported, he went to Orissa with a colleague and settled first in the village of Rudhipada, where he became known as Dara Singh. He later worked for a time as a temporary Hindi teacher at Maliposi High School. After losing that post he moved to Khuntapada, where he lived with a local Bajrang Dal member and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker and taught children lathi (stick) drill.
His defense lawyer told the trial court in 2003 that his father, then 85, was being treated in Noida and that his only brother was a psychiatric patient. In 2026 Business Standard gave his native place as Auraiya district and his age as 67. Other dates and places published for his birth and early life are unconfirmed.
By the late 1990s Pal had become a leading figure in a cow-protection campaign in Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar districts. Outlook's 1999 report described witnesses who saw him take an active part in stopping cattle trucks, and an RSS associate who said he had campaigned for a BJP candidate in the 1998 parliamentary election. The investigation reports cited by Outlook said his police record began in 1996 and that he had been involved in 11 criminal cases and one non-FIR case by 1999, most of them connected with stopping cattle traders; charge sheets had been filed in eight. Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), a rights group, and SabrangIndia describe him in 1999 as an active member of the Bajrang Dal and the Vishva Hindu Parishad who led raids on trucks driven by Muslim cattle traders, freed the animals and burned the vehicles.
How closely he was tied to those organizations was disputed from the start. The investigation report cited by Outlook called him an activist or supporter of the Bajrang Dal but said there was "no documentary evidence to prove that he is a member or office bearer of the outfit." That question is discussed further below.
On September 15, 1998, a truck carrying buffaloes was stopped, its animals were released and the vehicle was set on fire. Its assistant, Sheikh Imam, a Muslim man, was beaten and died in hospital. Pal was charged with 13 others. In October 2006 a court in Orissa acquitted him for lack of evidence, as AsiaNews reported at the time. He is not considered convicted of that death.
Graham Stuart Staines was born on January 18, 1941, in Palmwoods, Queensland, the second child of William and Elizabeth Staines, according to the Dictionary of Christian Biography in Asia. He worked in a garage office while studying accountancy at night. As a teenager he had begun writing to a pen friend in Baripada, the main town of Mayurbhanj district, and he first went to India in 1965, joining the Evangelical Missionary Society of Mayurbhanj, a Baptist mission founded in the 1890s with roots in Queensland. He stayed for the rest of his life.
In Baripada he worked at the mission's home for people with leprosy, which he helped register as a society in 1982 and managed from 1983. He learned Oriya, Santhali and Ho, wrote a Santhali song for a polio immunization drive and helped check a Ho translation of the New Testament published in 1997. Local people called him "Saibo," The Quint reported, and remembered him for his hat and his old bicycle. In 1983 he married Gladys Weatherhead, a nurse from Ipswich, Queensland, who had first come to Baripada in 1981. They had three children: a daughter, Esther, and two sons, Philip and Timothy. In 1999 Esther was at boarding school in southern India.
Graham Staines also organized "jungle camps," gatherings of several days for Bible teaching and prayer among Christians in the villages. Christianity Today reported in 2003 that the camps were meant for Christians. Outlook reported that earlier camps had met local friction, including a dispute in 1990 that was settled amicably and a 1998 camp disrupted by men on motorcycles, after which police asked that it be wound up.
Manoharpur is a remote tribal village under Anandapur police station in Keonjhar district, on the border with Mayurbhanj. In January 1999 the mission held a jungle camp there after the Makar Sankranti festival, the Supreme Court later recorded. Staines set out on January 20 with his two sons and several companions, Outlook reported. At night he and the boys slept in their station wagon, parked outside the village church. Gladys and Esther were not with them.
According to the investigation report summarized by Outlook, Pal planned the attack at Jamadwar Hill on January 21. His first attempt drew only eight people. The next day a larger crowd gathered and he led it, carrying a torch and an axe. The report quoted the instruction he was said to have given: that they would attack that night to kill and set fire to the vehicle and the church.
Shortly after midnight, a mob of 60 to 70 people, in the prosecution's account, surrounded the two vehicles parked by the church. Witnesses told the trial court that the attackers beat the vehicles with lathis, pushed straw underneath and set it alight. Some wore red headbands, according to the inquiry material reported by Outlook. The mob prevented Staines and his sons from getting out of the burning station wagon, and all three died. The attackers shouted "Jai Bajarang Bali" and "Dara Singh Zindabad," the Supreme Court recorded. The police were told the following day, when a villager lodged the first information report.
The accounts of the boys' ages vary across the press, from 8 to 10 for Philip and from 6 to 9 for Timothy. The Supreme Court judgment settles on about 10 and about 6.
At the funeral Gladys Staines said that she forgave the people who had killed her husband and sons. She told Ecumenical News International in November 1999 that the forgiveness had been a spontaneous act that took away her bitterness. She refused relatives' urging to return to Australia with Esther, saying Baripada was her home and she could not leave the leprosy patients, and she began planning a referral hospital in her husband's memory.
The local police took up the case first. On April 23, 1999, it was moved to the State Crime Branch, and on May 3, 1999, to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which filed a charge sheet on June 22, 1999. Pal, still at large, was among 18 people charged. According to the 2026 reporting of Outlook and The Quint, 51 people were arrested in the course of the inquiry. A boy who was under 18 at the time was tried separately before a juvenile court.
Alongside the criminal inquiry, the central government appointed a commission of inquiry under Justice D. P. Wadhwa, a sitting judge of the Supreme Court. Christianity Today reported in 1999 that the commission's counsel, Gopal Subramanium, presented a report of about 250 pages to the Home Ministry on June 21, 1999. The report concluded that "misplaced fundamentalism was the motive which led to the crime," called the killings pre-planned and carefully carried out, and named Pal as the man who led the mob. It criticized the slow start to the investigation and the failure to arrest him. It said there was not yet evidence from which to conclude that organizations such as the Bajrang Dal or the RSS had been involved. It found that tribal people who had become Christians had done so voluntarily, and it restated that preaching is a right protected by the Indian constitution. The Quint, summarizing the commission's findings in 2026, said it found no evidence that Staines had carried out forced conversions and that the Bajrang Dal was not involved in planning or carrying out the crime.
Outlook's report on the same material added that investigators had found Staines had not personally converted anyone and, not being an ordained minister, could not have performed baptisms. It also set out the social tensions the inquiry identified in the villages, among them complaints that converts had stopped contributing to village festivals and taking part in some traditional practices.
The findings were contested. Christian groups argued that Pal was part of a wider campaign. Sajan K. George of the United Christian Voice called him a pawn in a conspiracy to intimidate Christians and asked the government to expose the organizations behind it, Outlook reported after his arrest. A Deseret News report in February 2000 noted that Christian groups had linked Pal to movements affiliated with the governing party and that a government commission had found no such link. Hindu leaders, for their part, accused Christian missionaries of tricking tribal people into converting; missionaries denied this. When the Orissa High Court gave its ruling in 2005, the BBC, as summarized by Hindu Press International, again noted that an official inquiry had found no evidence that organized Hindu groups were behind the attack.
The Orissa High Court's 2022 judgment records the second killing. Sheikh Rahaman ran a temporary garment stall at the weekly market at Padiabeda, under Thakurmunda police station in Mayurbhanj district. At about 4:30 p.m. on August 26, 1999, two men demanded "chanda," a subscription, from him. He refused and there was a loud argument. Pal then came from the direction of the market's Durga mandap carrying an axe, chased Rahaman and struck him on the back; when he fell, Pal and others struck him again. He was dragged back to his stall, kerosene was poured over him and he was set on fire, and the stall was looted. He was taken to the subdivisional hospital at Karanjia and died at about 9 p.m. The post-mortem found eight external wounds, including incised and stab wounds, and burns; the cause of death was multiple injuries and burns leading to hemorrhage and shock. Outlook reported in 2000 that his hands had been cut off before he was set on fire.
Rahaman's brother gave evidence at the trial. Beyond that, the published accounts say nothing of Rahaman's life, his age or his family. The Tribune reported in September 1999 that six more people had been arrested over his death, bringing the number detained to nine, and that Pal, still a fugitive, was the main accused.
Father Arul Doss (also written Arul Das) was a Catholic priest of the Diocese of Balasore who served tribal communities, especially Ho people, in the Jambani area of Mayurbhanj district. Catholic News Agency gave his age as 33 when he died; an Indian Catholic news report in 2026 gave it as 35 and said he came from Tamil Nadu and had spent five years as pastor of the church at Anandapur. When he died, the Balasore diocese has said, only 18 Ho families at Jambani had become Christians.
On the night of September 1 to 2, 1999, at about 2 a.m., members of the Christian community were dancing in front of the church at Jambani while the priest slept in a room inside, the Orissa High Court recorded. A group armed with lathis, bows and arrows entered the church and asked for Father Arul Doss. More than five men chased him and killed him with arrows; the medical evidence showed fatal arrow wounds to vital organs. The church was then set on fire. The man who later lodged the complaint was struck on the back of the head with a lathi, lost consciousness and fled into the jungle. Police seized four arrows and samples of bloodstained earth from the house where the priest's body was first found.
Pal was a fugitive throughout 1999. The Wadhwa report criticized the failure to catch him. In September 1999, Outlook reported, the BJP held a one-day general strike in protest against what it called police harassment during the search. Special police teams combed the forests of Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar, and a reward of 8 lakh rupees was offered; the Deseret News put the bounty at 23,250 dollars and said police believed Hindu villagers had been sheltering him. Yogesh Bahadur Khurania, the superintendent of police in Mayurbhanj, had taken charge of the district after his predecessor was moved following earlier failures, and made the arrest within 20 days of doing so, according to Outlook.
Police learned that Pal wanted to buy a gun. Two earlier decoy attempts had failed, and he had turned down a country-made pistol because he wanted a bigger weapon. On the night of January 31, 2000, Outlook reported, a sub-inspector posing as an arms seller met him in forest about two kilometers from Gohira village, in Keonjhar district, with a non-working gun wrapped in sacking, while about 40 plainclothes police waited nearby. At about 10:45 p.m. the officer seized him. An associate escaped in the dark, and police fired three shots into the air. "While negotiations were going on between the decoy and Dara Singh, we managed to surround him and capture him," Khurania told reporters. The state's inspector general of police gave a different version, that Pal was found asleep in a house in Gohira village. Police then walked him about 12 kilometers to Kulania police station.
He had no firearms, only two spears and some chili powder, and he carried a copy of the Hanuman Chalisa, a Hindu devotional text. He was produced before the court at Karanjia late on February 1, 2000. The High Court's Rahaman judgment gives February 1 as the date of arrest; the Press Trust of India and Outlook give January 31.
After his arrest Pal said he had not meant to kill Staines and had gone only to threaten or beat him, and that the mob had killed the missionary and his children, Outlook reported. Police said he admitted being present at all three scenes but denied taking part in the killings. He said he had known he would be caught one day and that he felt stunned rather than afraid. A senior police officer told Christianity Today he was "confessing to all the crimes." Those were statements to police; the courts later rejected most of the formal confessions recorded in the Staines case, and the convictions rest on eyewitness evidence.
Gladys Staines told Reuters she was happy he had been caught because he could not kill others. She said she had forgiven him but preferred that the law take its course. Vijay Bhardwaj of the Vishva Hindu Parishad told Christianity Today that missionaries were to blame for the violence and called Pal's cause good, while saying he should not have killed. Christian leaders said the arrest did not end the danger to Christians.
The Staines case was tried in the court of the District and Sessions Judge at Khurda, designated as a CBI court, where the trial began on March 1, 2001, the Press Trust of India reported. Fourteen adults were tried. The prosecution called 55 witnesses and the defense 25. Several villagers identified Pal in court as the bearded man who had led the mob, and witnesses described hearing his name in the slogans. Several co-accused had made confessions before magistrates during 1999; one co-accused told the court in 2003 that he had been present when Pal set the vehicle on fire.
Mahendra Hembram, one of the accused, wrote to the sessions judge in February 2002 admitting his part, and the Supreme Court later relied on those letters and on a letter of February 10, 1999, in which he wrote that he had burned the missionary with Dara Singh. Gladys Staines testified for the prosecution and denied that her husband had bribed people to convert, Christianity Today reported.
On September 15, 2003, Judge Mahendra Nath Patnaik convicted Pal and 12 others and acquitted one man for lack of evidence. On September 22 he sentenced Pal to death, calling the case one of "the rarest of rare," Agence France-Presse reported, and gave the other 12 life imprisonment, finding that Pal had manipulated them. All 13 were also given seven years for mischief by fire. Pal's lawyers asked for leniency on the grounds of the defendants' poverty and family circumstances; the CBI's counsel, K. Sudhakar, cited Supreme Court rulings that such hardship could not weigh in sentencing. Gladys Staines said she had forgiven the killers, that forgiveness should not be confused with the consequences of a crime, and that she had no bitterness and no comment on the law taking its course.
At the sentencing hearing his lawyer said Pal had instructed him not to contest the judgment. In October 2003, however, Pal filed an appeal in the Orissa High Court, calling the investigation "biased and perfunctory," arguing that eyewitness accounts were inconsistent and that his extrajudicial confessions were "not true and voluntary," and alleging that witnesses had been "tutored" in police custody.
On May 19, 2005, the Orissa High Court ruled on the appeals and on the reference for confirmation of the death sentence. It found many of the witnesses not wholly reliable and held that the confessions had been obtained under threat and coercion. It acquitted 11 of the 12 men serving life sentences, upheld Hembram's conviction and life term, and upheld Pal's conviction but commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment. The court said there was no evidence that his individual act had caused the deaths, according to the BBC as summarized by Hindu Press International, and Christianity Today's summary of press reports quoted it as describing the CBI's evidence as tainted.
Pal called it "the happiest day of my life," Christianity Today reported. Christian leaders said they were deeply disappointed. Graham Staines's brother, John, said from Australia that he did not want Pal executed. The CBI said it would appeal to the Supreme Court for the death sentence to be restored.
In 2007 the sessions court of Mayurbhanj at Baripada decided the other two cases. In the Arul Doss case, 17 people had been sent for trial. On September 22, 2007, the court convicted Pal and three other men and acquitted 13; it gave the four men rigorous imprisonment for life for murder, with concurrent terms for arson, house trespass, rioting and causing hurt. In the Rahaman case, 38 people had been prosecuted. On October 29, 2007, Judge S. N. Sahoo acquitted every defendant except Pal, whom he convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Pal now had three life sentences.
The Supreme Court heard Pal's appeal, Hembram's appeal and the CBI's appeals against the acquittals together. On January 21, 2011, Justices P. Sathasivam and B. S. Chauhan dismissed all of them.
The court agreed with the High Court that much of the evidence against the other accused was weak. Witnesses had identified some men for the first time in court, years after the event, without an earlier identification parade; some admitted being shown photographs by the CBI; others had not named anyone to the first investigators. The judicial confessions had not been recorded with the safeguards the law requires. But the court found that the identification of Pal and Hembram was corroborated, in Pal's case by the slogans raised in his name and other evidence, and in Hembram's by his own letters. It confirmed the acquittals of the others, whom it described as poor tribal people.
On sentence, the court said that death should be imposed only in the rarest of rare cases and that the High Court had been right to reduce Pal's sentence. Its judgment as first delivered said the intention had been "to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities," and it also said there was "no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of 'use of force', provocation, conversion," incitement or other means.
Pal's lawyer, S. S. Mishra, said the judges had found the crime highly condemnable but not in the rarest of rare category, the Associated Press reported. A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India said the church accepted the verdict. Gladys Staines welcomed the ruling, said through a family friend that every person should be given another chance to rebuild his or her life, and, according to that friend, Esther had also forgiven the killers, Vatican Radio reported.
The court's remarks on conversion drew strong objections from Christian groups, who said the judgment appeared to treat the victims' religious work as an explanation for the crime and undermined their constitutional right to practice and spread their faith. One group sent the court an open letter on January 25, 2011, objecting to what it called "gratuitous observations," Associated Baptist Press reported. Neville Callam, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, said he was deeply disappointed.
On January 25, 2011, the bench revised the judgment. The news agency IANS reported that the court acted on its own after widespread criticism. The passage linking the sentence to the victims' religious work was replaced with a statement that more than 12 years had passed since the crime and that, in view of the facts already discussed, there was no reason to increase the life sentence. The general sentence about interference in belief was replaced with "There is no justification for interfering in someone's religious belief by any means." The Hindustan Times reported that the lines about teaching Staines a lesson for converting poor tribal people were removed entirely. The revision did not change the outcome: life imprisonment for Pal and Hembram, and the acquittal of the others.
Pal's appeals in the two Mayurbhanj cases waited 15 years. On January 10, 2022, a bench of Chief Justice S. Muralidhar and Justice B. P. Routray dismissed his appeal in the Rahaman case. The defense argued that the eyewitnesses disagreed about the weapon (one said an axe, the other a spear), that the weapons had not been examined, that the burns were unexplained and that the complaint had reached the court late. The judges held that the two eyewitnesses were consistent on the main points and treated the other issues as minor. Pal's lawyer asked that his sentence be cut to the more than 21 years he had already served. The court refused, citing the brutality of the attack on an unarmed man with whom he had no prior quarrel: "there is no case made out for any leniency as far as the sentence is concerned."
On September 7, 2022, a bench of Chief Justice Muralidhar and Justice Chittaranjan Dash decided the Arul Doss appeal. The defense argued that the main eyewitness had admitted he could not tell in the dark who attacked whom, that no identification parade had been held, and that, with 13 accused acquitted, the conviction for murder as part of an unlawful assembly could not stand. The judges agreed on that last point and set aside the unlawful-assembly counts. But they held that the evidence showed a common intention among the four men to kill the priest and burn the church, that the main eyewitness knew the attackers from an earlier visit to the church, and that the lack of an identification parade did not discredit him. They upheld the convictions for murder, arson, trespass and causing hurt and the life sentences, and ordered the men on bail to surrender.
Pal has spent his sentence in Odisha jails, in recent years in the district jail at Kendujhar (Keonjhar). Prison records describe his general conduct as good, according to Business Standard and Outlook in 2026. He went on hunger strike in 2006 and 2008. He has never been granted parole or furlough; the Orissa High Court refused a parole application in 2003 and the Keonjhar district magistrate another in 2012.
Business Standard and Outlook reported that the State Sentence Review Board rejected his requests for premature release in November 2016, June 2019, December 2020, January 2022 and February 2023. On January 30, 2023, the Orissa High Court directed the state's Home Department to reconsider his representation under the release policy of September 26, 2000, which had been in force when he was convicted, rather than under a later policy that barred release for crimes such as his. The state had told the court that he had murdered a child under 14 and committed multiple murders in the same incident; it conceded that he had served the statutory minimum of 14 years.
During a 2022 campaign for his release, The Quint reported, the Sudarshan TV editor Suresh Chavhanke was refused permission to meet him in jail, and Mohan Charan Majhi, then a BJP member of the state assembly and now chief minister of Odisha, joined a protest outside the prison. Supporters had by then formed a group called the Dara Sena.
In 2024 Pal petitioned the Supreme Court for remission, represented by the advocates Hari Shankar Jain and Vishnu Shankar Jain. He said he had served more than 25 years, the period after which Odisha's 2022 policy allows prisoners whose death sentences were commuted to be considered; that he had acted in "a fit of youthful rage" and now regretted it; and that he wished to return to society as a reformed man. He relied on the Supreme Court's 2022 order releasing the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
The review board deferred Pal's case in May 2025, citing his three murder convictions, and again in September 2025, seeking a report from his home district in Uttar Pradesh, ThePrint reported. Meanwhile, on April 16, 2025, Mahendra Hembram, then 50, was released from Keonjhar jail on grounds of good behavior after 25 years, on a decision of the same board. Jail staff garlanded him, and he was given a passbook holding his prison earnings. Outside the jail he told reporters he had spent 25 years in prison "after being falsely implicated in an incident related to religious conversion," the Press Trust of India reported. His conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011 and stands.
In February 2026 the authorities in Auraiya supported Pal's release, and in March the Kendujhar district administration gave a conditional recommendation, saying he could be considered subject to conditions to keep social harmony. In early July, The Quint reported, the review board recommended release on grounds of good behavior, subject to government approval. On July 14 the Supreme Court bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi asked the state to decide, and listed the case for August 19.
By then the issue had become public. On August 15, 2026, India's Independence Day, between 200 and 250 people linked to the Dara Sena gathered outside Kendujhar district jail over his proposed release, and "provocative slogans were reportedly raised," according to the district report quoted in the board's proceedings. On August 19 the court noted that Pal had been in prison for more than 26 years, that a report from the jail was still awaited, and directed the board to decide. On September 8, Justice Misra told the state's counsel: "Why are you lingering like this? Take a decision, accept or reject," and warned that the court would summon the responsible secretary, LiveLaw reported.
At a special meeting on August 31, 2026, the board decided it was "not inclined to recommend his premature release at this stage." It cited the possible "societal ramifications" and the risk of communal disturbance, the August 15 gathering, a district report of August 28 that it called inconclusive, and his convictions in three murder cases, Business Standard and ThePrint reported. On September 17 the state told the Supreme Court of the decision. The court did not examine the reasons. It allowed Pal two weeks to amend his petition to challenge the refusal, directed that he be given the board's proceedings, and listed the case after three weeks. "Amend your petition and then argue," Justice Misra told his lawyers, ThePrint reported.
As of October 18, 2026, Pal remains in prison serving his life sentences, held at Kendujhar district jail according to the latest reports. The board's refusal of August 31, 2026, stands. His Supreme Court petition, Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 301 of 2024, is pending, and no hearing or ruling after the order of September 17, 2026, has been reported.
Gladys Staines stayed in India after the killings, running the leprosy home in Baripada and raising money for a hospital in her husband's memory. A hostel for boys named after Philip and Timothy opened in 2003, and the Graham Staines Memorial Hospital opened in 2004 with 15 beds, according to the Dictionary of Christian Biography in Asia. She received the Gandhi Communal Harmony award in 2002, and in 2005 the Indian government awarded her the Padma Shri, one of its highest civilian honors; she said she was "absolutely overwhelmed and stunned." She returned to Australia in 2004 and lives in Queensland, where she has served as honorary secretary of the mission society. In 2011 Esther was a final-year medical student in Australia.
"Once you forgive, there will be healing," Gladys Staines told Christianity Today in 2003. In a 2019 interview she said she had left the legal process to take its own course, and she spoke of imagining her boys playing in heaven while their father watched them. The case was dramatized in an American-backed film, The Least of These, released in 2019, with Stephen Baldwin as Graham Staines.
The Diocese of Balasore regards Father Arul Doss as a martyr. In September 2024, for the 25th anniversary of his death, more than 4,000 Catholics attended a Mass in the jungle at Jambani with the bishop of Balasore, Catholic News Agency reported; in September 2026 about 3,000 people, including 13 members of his family, attended the annual commemoration there. A play school in Sarat block bears his name.
Proven by final judgment: Pal's convictions for the murders of Graham, Philip and Timothy Staines (upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011), of Sheikh Rahaman (upheld in January 2022) and of Father Arul Doss (upheld in September 2022).
Not proven: his part in the September 1998 death of Sheikh Imam. He was tried and acquitted in 2006.
Acquitted co-accused: in the Staines case, 11 men convicted in 2003 were acquitted by the High Court in 2005, and the Supreme Court confirmed those acquittals in 2011; one man was acquitted at trial in 2003. In the Rahaman case, 37 co-accused were acquitted at trial; in the Arul Doss case, 13 were. A further accused said to be a close associate of Pal, who had been absconding since 1999, was arrested by the CBI in September 2019, The Telegraph reported; no outcome of his case has been reported.
What Pal did personally at Manoharpur: the trial court treated him as the leader who set the vehicle on fire; the High Court in 2005 said, according to press reports, that no individual act of his had been shown to cause the deaths, while upholding his conviction. After his arrest he told police he had meant only to frighten or beat Staines. The courts found him guilty of murder in every case.
Organizational links: the Wadhwa Commission found no conclusive evidence that the Bajrang Dal, the RSS or other organizations planned the killing, and found that Pal was a supporter or activist of the Bajrang Dal without documentary proof of membership. Christian groups and rights organizations have long argued that he acted as part of a wider campaign. Neither view has been tested in a criminal court.
Conversion: Pal's supporters and some Hindu nationalist groups have said Staines was converting tribal people by improper means. The Wadhwa Commission found no evidence of forced conversions, and Gladys Staines has repeatedly denied it. The Supreme Court's original remarks on conversion were removed by the court itself on January 25, 2011.
Details that vary between sources: the date of the killings (January 21, 22 or 23, 1999, in different reports; the Supreme Court gives midnight of January 22 to 23); the boys' ages (see above) and Graham Staines's age (57 or 58); the size of the mob (50 to 60 or 60 to 70); the date Pal came to Orissa (1987 in the 1999 inquiry material, 1996 in one magazine report); the date of his arrest (January 31 or February 1, 2000) and its circumstances (the decoy deal in the forest, or found asleep in a house); the date of his conviction in the Staines case (a 2023 High Court order gives September 29, 2003); the number of Rahaman co-accused acquitted (37 in the High Court judgment); Father Arul Doss's age (33 or 35); and the year of Hembram's release (April 2025 in contemporary reports, April 2026 in one later article).
January 18, 1941: Graham Staines is born in Palmwoods, Queensland.
1965: Graham Staines arrives in Baripada to work with leprosy patients.
1981: Rabindra Kumar Pal, from Kakur Bujurg in what is now Auraiya district, Uttar Pradesh, moves to Delhi to work.
1983: Graham Staines marries Gladys Weatherhead.
1987: Pal settles in Orissa and becomes known as Dara Singh.
1996: Pal's police record begins.
September 15, 1998: Sheikh Imam is killed after a cattle truck is attacked (Pal later acquitted).
January 22 to 23, 1999: Graham, Philip and Timothy Staines are killed at Manoharpur, Keonjhar district.
April 23, 1999: case moves to the State Crime Branch; May 3, 1999: to the CBI.
June 21, 1999: Wadhwa Commission report presented.
June 22, 1999: CBI charge sheet names Pal among 18 accused.
August 26, 1999: Sheikh Rahaman is killed at Padiabeda market.
September 1 to 2, 1999: Father Arul Doss is killed at Jambani; the church is burned.
January 31, 2000: Pal is arrested near Gohira village; produced in court at Karanjia on February 1.
March 1, 2001: Staines trial begins at Khurda.
September 15, 2003: Pal and 12 others convicted; September 22, 2003: Pal sentenced to death.
May 19, 2005: Orissa High Court commutes his sentence to life and acquits 11 co-accused.
October 2006: acquitted in the Sheikh Imam case.
September 22, 2007: life sentence in the Arul Doss case; October 29, 2007: life sentence in the Rahaman case.
January 21, 2011: Supreme Court upholds his life sentence and dismisses the CBI's appeals.
January 25, 2011: Supreme Court revises the passages on conversion.
November 2016 to February 2023: five requests for premature release rejected.
January 10, 2022: Rahaman conviction upheld; September 7, 2022: Arul Doss conviction upheld.
January 30, 2023: Orissa High Court orders reconsideration under the 2000 release policy.
2024: Pal petitions the Supreme Court for remission.
April 16, 2025: Mahendra Hembram released after 25 years.
July 2026: review board recommends release, pending government approval; July 14, Supreme Court asks the state to decide.
August 15, 2026: Dara Sena gathering outside Kendujhar jail.
August 31, 2026: review board refuses premature release.
September 17, 2026: state informs the Supreme Court; Pal allowed to amend his petition.
October 18, 2026: still in prison; no later order reported.