Bhubaneswar: The nomination papers filed by Dara Singh, serving a life term for killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two small sons in 1999, were Monday rejected after scrutiny in Orissa, officials said.
Dara Singh, who is currently lodged in Keonjhar jail, had filed his nomination papers by proxy on Saturday as an independent candidate from the Ghasipura assembly constituency in Keonjhar district.
However, his nomination papers were rejected because they were not supported by documents including an affidavit regarding his criminal antecedents, returning officer Surath Chandra Mallick told IANS.
Electoral laws bar anyone who has been sentenced to more than a two-year jail term from contesting elections, until six years after the completion of the sentence.
On January 22, 1999, a mob led by Dara Singh burnt alive Staines and his two sons, 10-year-old Philip and six-year-old Timothy, while they were asleep in their vehicle in Manoharpur, a village in Keonjhar district.
In September 2003, the district and sessions court of Khurda sentenced Dara Singh to death and handed down life terms to 12 of his associates. However, the Orissa High Court commuted the death penalty to life imprisonment in May 2005.
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