New Delhi: The Supreme Court has directed the Odisha State Sentence Review Board to take a decision on the premature release plea of Rabindra Kumar Pal alias Dara Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons.

A bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi expressed displeasure over the delay in deciding Pal's plea. The court directed the Sentence Review Board to consider the matter and inform it of the outcome before the next hearing on September 2.

"Take a decision; otherwise, we will," the bench said while listing the matter for September 2.

The court was informed that the Sentence Review Board had been considering Pal's plea when the matter was last adjourned. However, no decision of the Board had been placed before the court.

Appearing for the Odisha government, the state's counsel produced a letter from the Directorate of Prisons stating that a report from the District Jail in Kendujhar was still awaited.

The Supreme Court then directed the Sentence Review Board to take a decision on the plea and place the outcome before it at the next hearing.

Pal, popularly known as Dara Singh, has spent more than 26 years in prison. He was convicted for the killing of Graham Staines and his sons, Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6, who were burnt alive while sleeping inside their station wagon at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district on January 22, 1999.

A trial court awarded Pal the death penalty in 2003. The Orissa High Court commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in 2005.

In 2011, the Supreme Court upheld the life sentence, ruling that the case did not qualify as one of the "rarest of rare" cases in which the death penalty could be imposed.