Encouraged perhaps by the Wadhwa Commission's unsupportable findings; the shameful event was followed shortly thereafter by a similar incident in which a Muslim shopkeeper was attacked with matching ferocity and killed, and on 2 September, when a Catholic priest was killed by arrows ...

Dara Singh cannot be found, or so we are asked to believe; he has been spotted often enough, he has the temerity to appear on a local television channel, his face is well known, he continues to operate in the same area but the police cannot find him ... Dara Singh is reported on good authority to be associated with the Bajrang Dal and the Sangh Parivar and one can ignore L.K. Advani's gratuitous comment in the wake of the Staines murders that he knows the Bajrang Dal and there is no criminality in them. The clumsy phraseology apart, there are enough indications in the shape of police reports to the contrary.

On an issue of this sensitivity, one would have expected the Congress to have promptly joined the demand for Dara Singh's detention ... They did not do so. Why not? Was it because Orissa is a Congress-ruled state or, worse still, are the party afraid of offending the majority community.

Must all criminal investigations be governed by communal or political considerations ?... (Source: The StatesInan, 9 August, 1999)