BHUBANESHWAR, India (AP) -- A 13-year-old witness on Wednesday identified in court a man who allegedly burned to death an Australian missionary and his two minor sons two years ago.
Singho Marandi, an eighth grade student, identified Ojen Hansda as a court clerk took her to the identification dock.
Graham Stewart Staines and his sons, Timothy and Phillip, died as their car was set on fire by the assailants on the night of January 23, 1999, in a remote tribal-dominated village in Koenjhar district in eastern Orissa state.
Marandi told Judge Mahendranath Patnaikre that she was sleeping in the porch of a house just 200 feet (60 meters) from a church where the Australian missionary's jeep was parked.
She said she was woken up by her mother around midnight and she saw a fire ball. Ojen Hansda and Chenchu Hansda, both local residents, then came running toward her house.
"They said they have already killed the occupants of the vehicle parked near the church and would kill us too if we dared to go near the church," Marandi said.
Fourteen men are being tried for murdering Staines and his two children. If convicted, they could be sentenced to death by hanging.
The killings followed a series of attacks on churches and Christian missionary institutions in several Indian states that began in 1998. Hindu nationalists accuse missionaries of converting impoverished Indians to Christianity by lure of money.
Christians represent about 2 percent of India's more than one billion population.