Dara Singh arrested

Dara Singh arrested
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

BARIPADA, FEBRUARY 1: Fugitive Dara Singh, on the run since the cold-blooded killing of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two minor sons over a year ago, walked into a police trap in the dense forest of Guhari in Orissa, about 170 kms from here, in the wee hours on Tuesday, senior police officials said.

Dara alias Rabindra Kumar Pal, prime accused in the ghastly murder and carrying a reward of Rs 8 lakh on his head, was nabbed by a special police team when he reached the forest to purchase a gun from a contact person, Mayurbhanj SP Y P Khurania, who led the forces, said.

The contact man had sometime back managed to persuade Dara to buy a gun in view of the police manhunt launched against him. The fugitive arrived at the spot at an appointed time for the gun when Khurania and his team caught him.

He was later taken to Karanjia and from there to Baripada under armed police escort. One of his associates was also arrested alongwith Dara but his identity is yet to be known, Khurania said.They will be interrogated here by a team of CBI sleuths, he said.

Besides Khurania, the special police team which nabbed Dara included sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) of Rairangpur, A K Nayak, officer-in-charge of Thakurmunda police station Balram Sagar and Circle Inspector of Rairangpur Dilip Das.

Staines and his two sons Philip (10) and Timothy (7) were burnt alive in their station wagon on the night of January 22, 1999 in front of a church in Manoharpur in Keonjhar district by a frenzied mob led by Dara. The missionary, who had worked among leprosy patients in Mayurbhanj for about three decades, had been to Manoharpur to attend a jungle camp and was sleeping inside the vehicle with his sons when he was done to death.

Dara, who hails from Uttar Pradesh is also named as the main accused in the FIR after a Muslim trader Sheikh Rahman was hacked to death in broad daylight at a crowded market at Padiabeda near Thakurmunda in Mayurbhanj district on August 26.

A few days later a Catholic priest ArulDoss was pierced to death at Jamubani, an inaccessible village a few kilometres away from Padiabeda, allegedly by Dara and his gang. During the past one year, Dara had several close encounters with police, but each time he managed to give the slip leaving only some clothes, toothbrush, medicines, or a bundle of bidis.

However, 14 of his associates were arrested in the past one year. Besides Dara, 17 others have been chargesheeted by CBI which had been entrusted with the investigation of the Staines' murder case.

The D P Wadhwa Commission, which probed the ghastly incident has held it as an act of an individual (Dara Singh) who had no affiliation with any organisation.

Very few people, except inhabitants of villages located on either side of Mayurbhanj-Keonjhar border, were not even aware of Dara's name till he emerged as a villain of the Manoharpur tragedy, police said.

Till then Dara and his associates were engaged in petty crimes and snatching of cattle from Muslim traders and giving them tothe villagers, police said.

About a dozen cases are pending against Dara Singh and his gang in the two districts in this connection, they added. Gladys Staines, the grief-stricken widow of the Australian missionary, had pleaded forgiveness for her husband and sons' killers after the tragedy. ``I have forgiven them (the killers)....my only desire is that Dara Singh does not kill anymore and stops fighting against god,'' she had told a gathering at Mumbai two days ago while inaugurating a book Burnt Alive: The Staines And The God They Loved by Vishal Magalwadi, Vijay Martis, N B Desai, Babu K Verghese and Radha Samuel.