New Delhi: The Supreme Court has granted murder convict Rabindra Kumar Pal alias Dara Singh two weeks to challenge the Odisha government’s decision of rejecting his plea for premature release in the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons.

A bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi passed the order after the Odisha government informed the court that Singh’s plea for premature release has been rejected by the Odisha Sentence Review Board after considering all relevant facts and circumstances, including the gravity of the offence.

The Supreme Court has listed the matter for hearing after three weeks.

Singh (67) is serving a life sentence for the killing of Graham Staines (58) and his sons Philip (10) and Timothy (6). The three were burnt alive while sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur village in Odisha’s Keonjhar district on January 22, 1999.

The Odisha Sentence Review Board rejected Singh’s plea, observing that his release could have societal ramifications and potentially lead to communal disturbances.

Singh had approached the Supreme Court seeking premature release after spending more than 26 years in prison. The top court had earlier directed the Odisha State Sentence Review Board to take a decision on his plea.

A trial court sentenced Singh to death in 2003. The Orissa High Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment in 2005.

In 2011, the Supreme Court upheld the life sentence, holding that the case did not fall within the category of “rarest of rare” cases warranting capital punishment.