A lower court in northern Orissa on Saturday pronounced life imprisonment for Dara Singh and three others in the Catholic priest Father Arul Doss murder case.

Singh is already serving a life-term in the Australian missionary Graham Stewart Staines murder case.

While awarding imprisonment for life for Singh and three others — Jadunath Mohanto, Raj Kishore Mohanto and Chema Ho, the districts and sessions court, Baripada, Mayurbhanj acquitted 17 other accused in the case because of lack of sufficient evidence against them. Father Arul Doss, the priest of the local church at Jamubani under Mahuladiha police station in tribal dominated Mayurbhanj district was brutally murdered with the help of poisoned arrows and bows on September 1, 1999, just a few months after the killing of Graham Staines and his two minor sons at Manoharpur in neighbouring tribal district of Keonjhar.

The crime branch of the Orissa police had charge-sheeted Singh and 21 others in the Arul Doss case the trial of which had begun in September 2004. The trial was over in July this year.

Singh and other accused were present in the Baripada court when the judge pronounced his judgment.
Dara Singh alias Rabindra Kumar Pal is currently housed in the Baripada prison after the Orissa High Court reduced his punishment to life imprisonment from death sentence awarded to him by a designated CBI court in Bhubaneswar in the Staines murder case four years back.

The CBI has moved the apex court against the High Court’s verdict.