The Rt Rev Dr Samson Das [photo: UBS/Julian Phillips
WR411/13 IND07DJ-1]
Rt Rev Dr Samson Das
INDIA — “I think the Holy Spirit is working within him,” said the Rt Rev Dr Samson Das quietly. Dr Das is Bishop of the Diocese of Cuttack (Church of North India) and Vice President of the Cuttack Auxiliary of the Bible Society of India. He was speaking about a brief meeting he had with the man imprisoned for organising the murder of Graham Staines and his sons.
On a recent visit to the United Bible Societies’ World Service Center in Reading, Dr Das described how, as the Area Superintendent of Cuttack Pastorate Union in 1999, he came to conduct the funeral of Graham Staines and his sons. And then, almost as an afterthought, he described his meeting in prison with Dara Singh.
Gruesome killing
“The local church pastor called and told me about the gruesome killing of Graham Staines with his two sons Timothy and Philip,” he began. “I was also informed by some of my church leaders. “It was amazing: such a thing had never happened in Orissa before. He was not a pastor, he was serving with the Leprosy Mission; the Maharajah of Mayurbhanj district had invited him to come and serve in our state. So it was a great shock. The pastor wanted me to come [to Baripada] and perform the burial service.” He went on to describe the moment when, together with some church leaders from his Area, for the first time he met Graham Staines’s widow and the mother of the two boys, who had been aged nine and seven.
Disturbed
“His widow, Gladys, was very disturbed,” he said. “The moment she saw me she started weeping and crying in a loud voice. She said, ‘Pastor, so far I haven’t had time to cry’, because so many media people and others were just asking questions. She was really disturbed. “So I started to pray. I prayed for around ten to 15 minutes. All through the prayer Gladys was just weeping. “Then she was relaxed. I said to her, ‘You go and take rest; I’ll take care of other things’.” Dr Das found that some of the attention of the press then shifted onto him. “Media people came and asked me questions: why it happened…. how it happened … I said, “You have to find it out all these things from the news reporters.” The impending arrival of the three coffins presented him with a major – but delicate – problem. “The next day we got information that they were sending the bodies,” he said, “and I was told to convince Gladys not to open them… She said, ‘No! I want to see my two children! I want to see my husband! I will never see them again!’
Coffins
“So I said to her, ‘The beautiful face of your husband is not there. So the face which you have in your heart – let it remain. Why see something very different – which will haunt you every day?’ Somehow she was convinced.” On arrival, the coffins were set out in the mission compound because the church was small and there were literally thousands of people wanting to pay their respects. “Then we all went in a procession to the burial ground. It is one or two kilometres from the mission compound and people were standing along both the sides of the road.” Contemporary accounts describe “countless” people lining the streets in honour of Mr Staines and his sons. Dr Das then led the burial service with a local pastor.
No fingers
“An especially moving scene,” he said, “was when the lepers came. They had no fingers, but they were just picking up the mud like this” – he brings the knuckles of his two hands together in a demonstration – “throwing it onto the coffin and crying with loud voices, ‘Now we have become orphans. Who will take care of us? They have killed our father!’” That evening there was a prayer meeting at the house. “I stayed one more day and then I returned.” The story didn’t quite end there, though. Last year Dr Das’s involvement with the Prison Fellowship ministry took him to a prison in Baripada. “When we go to the prisons,” he said, “we go with Gospels, we distribute them, we sing songs and we talk with the men about love, about joy and about peace.”
Accused
This particular occasion was a little different, however. For Baripada prison is where Dara Singh, the man accused following the Staines murders, is serving his sentence. “We gave him a copy of the Gospel; he accepted it gladly,” Dr Das recalled. “He was very serious. I think the Holy Spirit is working within him.”
(WR 411/13 - 05.07)[1 photo]
The murder of a long-serving missionary
The brutal murder of the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons, in the Indian state of Orissa in January 1999, sent shock waves around the world.
Mr Staines, an Australian who was serving with Leprosy Mission, had spent nearly 30 years in the area, and was generally well known and liked. But he was unpopular with Hindu extremists, who accused him of converting local people to Christianity. He and his sons, who had been attending a Christian camp, died when the vehicle in which they were sleeping was attacked and set on fire. Fourteen people were put on trial for the murders, including Dara Singh, who is alleged to have organised the killings. When the men on trial were sentenced, Mr Staines’s widow Gladys issued a statement saying she had forgiven the killers. “[I] have no bitterness,” she said, “because forgiveness brings healing and our land needs healing from hatred and violence.” After her husband’s death she stayed on in India with her daughter Esther. Later she wrote a book, entitled Burnt Alive: The Staines and the God They Loved.
The brutal murder of the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons, in the Indian state of Orissa in January 1999, sent shock waves around the world.
Mr Staines, an Australian who was serving with Leprosy Mission, had spent nearly 30 years in the area, and was generally well known and liked. But he was unpopular with Hindu extremists, who accused him of converting local people to Christianity. He and his sons, who had been attending a Christian camp, died when the vehicle in which they were sleeping was attacked and set on fire. Fourteen people were put on trial for the murders, including Dara Singh, who is alleged to have organised the killings. When the men on trial were sentenced, Mr Staines’s widow Gladys issued a statement saying she had forgiven the killers. “[I] have no bitterness,” she said, “because forgiveness brings healing and our land needs healing from hatred and violence.” After her husband’s death she stayed on in India with her daughter Esther. Later she wrote a book, entitled Burnt Alive: The Staines and the God They Loved.