States: Orissa: Unfinished Mission

India Today, June 7, 1999
June 7, 1999

ORISSA
Unfinished Mission

The legacy of Graham Staines lives on in Baripada even as investigations indicates the killing was not political.

By Ruben Banerjee

Gladys says life has been so hectic since that fateful night that she has not had time to grieve Life has not changed at the leprosy home on the outskirts of Baripada in Orissa's Mayurbhanj district. The 60-odd inmates still await the arrival of the vehicle and greet it with unmitigated joy when it rolls into their compound in the mornings. And the visitor still affectionately holds their bruised hands and soothes their feelings. The only difference is it is not Graham Stuart Staines -- the Christian missionary who was burnt alive along with his two sons by a mob on January 23 in Keonjhar district -- but his widow Gladys who is showering love on the leprosy patients.

Gladys, 47, has picked up the threads of life from where Graham left them and plunged headlong into what he had devoted his life to: the upkeep of the leprosy home and the well-being of its inmates. Graham was the superintendent-cum-secretary-cum-treasurer of the home. Gladys has assumed charge as acting superintendent. "The world does not come to an end if somebody dies," she explains. "Life must go on."

Wadhwa: getting close to the truth For the inmates, who feared that she and daughter Esther, 13, would leave after the January killings, this has come as good news. "The Lord is great. We have not been orphaned," they say in unison. "It would have been sad had Gladys decided to go back. The inmates of the home would have been deprived of her service," explains family friend Subhankar Ghosh. But a trained nurse by profession, service comes naturally to the lady from Brisbane. "Graham would have hated to see me sit at home and do nothing," says Gladys.

It has been hectic since that fateful January night. Visitors still stream in and condolence messages haven't stopped coming in. More pressing are the constant requests for interviews from visiting journalists. "I have been too busy to cry," says Gladys. But she comes close to tears at the dining table as memories come flooding back: ice cream was a favourite with Graham, while Timothy loved mangoes.

Somewhere in the forests not far from Baripada hides the man who led the mob that burnt them alive. On the run from the police for the past three months, Dara Singh -- the country's most sought after fugitive -- is increasingly feeling the heat with both the CBI and the state crime branch on his tracks.

With the price on his head having increased from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 6 lakh in recent weeks, Dara is under intense pressure. Holed up somewhere in the hilly terrain between Simlipal and Thakurmunda, Dara's movements are severely restricted due to incessant raids by the police "It's just a matter of time before Dara's cat and mouse game comes to an end. We have him with his back against the wall," says a CBI official.

But Dara is not the only one faring badly after the killings. The testimonies of the 52 witnesses examined by the Justice D.P. Wadhwa Commission have besmirched reputations, including that of Graham Staines. The doctor who attended to the patients in the lepers' home told the commission that Staines was intolerant of other religions.

It is, however, the image of the Orissa Police that has suffered the most. "More than Dara, it seems that the police are in the dock," says Shyamananda Mohapatra, BJP spokesman and counsel. All the 51 arrested initially have now been found innocent by the CBI. In its deposition before Justice Wadhwa, the police had claimed that the fir lodged by one Ralia Soren -- supposedly an eyewitness -- mentioned five names. But Ralia testified before the commission that he had named only three people and that he had never been a witness to the crime -- the fir was based on what he had heard from others.

There has been no let-up in the embarrassments for the state police. Having earlier claimed that Dara was a Bajrang Dal activist and had links with the BJP, police officers lost face when they failed to substantiate the claim. A former SP of Keonjhar admitted that his information about Dara's links with the Bajrang Dal was based on "press clippings and common sense". On being asked why he did not probe Dara's alleged links with the BJP, the incumbent SP told a stunned court that "it was so well known locally that no probe was required".

Even DGP Dilip Mohapatra has admitted that there is little to implicate either the BJP or the Bajrang Dal. "Dara appears to be a supporter of the Bajrang Dal or BJP. But in my opinion, he is not a card holder or an active member of the two organisations," the DGP testified before the commission. Crime Branch officers are also of the same opinion.

The commission itself appears to be veering round to a similar conclusion. Increasingly convinced that the killings were an individual act by Dara and not a larger conspiracy of any organisation, the commission served notice only to Dara through advertisements in newspapers to appear and present his version.

Gladys says she is upset, not angry. But as evidence of doctoring the fir, arresting innocents and giving the crime a political colour stacks up against the state police, and the dragnet closes in on the elusive Dara, the pieces of the whodunit are slowly falling into place. And it seems that it will not be long before the killers of Graham Staines and his sons are brought to book.

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