Media Release

New Delhi, Sep 26: The century-old All India Catholic Union joins the global Christian community in condemning the vicious attack on the memory of Martyr Graham Stuart Staines, an Australia-born person working with victims of Henson’s disease, also known as leprosy, in Orissa who was burnt alive with his two minor sons, Timothy and Phillip, on January 22, 1999 by Bajrang Dal leader Dara Singh.

Dara Singh, currently serving a life term in prison for the triple murder, had allegedly also been behind the murder of Muslim cattle trader Rehman and a Catholic priest, Fr Arul Doss, in the state.

AICU national president Lancy D'Cunha in a statement expressed the Catholic Union’s pain and anguish that though the NDA government of the late prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, had expressed its regret and had immediately set up the Commission of Enquiry under the Supreme Court Justice D P Wadhwa, the NDA-II government seemed to have encouraged a deliberate calumny on a murdered person. The AICU noted that the then President of India, K R Narayanan called the Staines murders a 'monumental aberration of time-tested tolerance and harmony, belonging to the world’s inventory of black deeds'.

The remarks in the Lok Sabha by former Mumbai police commissioner turned politician, Satya Pal Singh, on September 21 during a debate on the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, have evoked repugnance across the world, with calls on the speaker to expunge them from the records. Singh, elected from Uttar Pradesh, had alleged that the NGO of Staines was fraudulently converting people to Christianity. The MP also insinuated sexual misconduct with Adivasi women.

The speech seemed well prepared, covering in its sweep the current tropes of conversion, foreign funding and luring tribals. AICU recalled that the CBI, the Justice Wadhwa Commission, as well as the sessions judge who sentenced Dara Singh to death, had not found any truth in such insinuations. In fact, the Supreme Court bench of Justice P Sathasivam, later BJP-appointed Governor Of Kerala, had to hastily remove an innuendo from its January 2012 order.

The Staines triple murder drew global attention to the rise or militant elements affiliated to religious nationalist groups.

The Catholic Union fears there is a planned strategy to demonise religious communities to polarise the people, especially in areas where policies have impacted their livelihood, land, forests and water. Such targeted hate campaigns often lead to violence.

The AICU also condemned the efforts to cast aspersions on the Christian faith and the community living in North eastern states.

AICU president, Lancy D'Cunha, called upon the country’s political leadership to take steps to strengthen communal harmony in the country.