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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 riothit
people. BJP has no decency left." (CT).
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