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Panel blames Dara Singh for Staines murder

The Wadhwa Commission is reported to have given a clean chit to Hindu organisations in the murder of Australian missionary Graham Stewart Staines and his two minor sons in Manoharpur village of Orissa's Keonjhar district in January this year.

The Commission has blamed key accused Dara Singh for the murders.

Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani has sent copies of the Commission report and the action taken report to Parliament following a Cabinet decision in this regard.

The report has been placed in the parliament library to make it public.

Staines was murdered during the intervening night of January 22 and 23. The Commission, set up on January 27, was asked to submit its report within three months. Its term was extended up to June 28.

The Commission submitted its report on June 21.

The report, as a consequence, had to be placed in Parliament latest by December 1999. Since the Lok Sabha stands dissolved, the government had decided to proceed in this manner.

Briefing the media, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan had said there was a similar precedent in the Justice Kuldip Singh Committee investigating land deals in Karnataka.

This committee was appointed by the V P Singh government in 1989 and the then government had adopted the same procedure to make the report public.

UNI

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