BHUBANESHWAR, India - A witness to the burning deaths three years ago of an Australian missionary and his two sons in eastern India said Monday that he saw six men accused of the murder gathering with a mob shortly before the attack.
Fourteen men are being tried on charges of burning to death Christian missionary Graham Stewart Staines and his sons, Philip, 10, and Timothy, 8, as they slept inside their vehicle outside a church in Manoharpur, a village in eastern Orissa state, on Jan. 23, 1999.
Solomon Marandi told a court that while one of the accused, Dara Singh, kept hitting the Staines' vehicle with a wooden truncheon, two others, Rajat Das and Surat Nayak, set the jeep on fire by pushing burning straw under it.
He said three other men, Harish Mohanto, Ojen Hansda and Kartik Lohar, were part of a mob that surrounded the vehicle.
Manoharpur is 235 kilometers (145 miles) north of Bhubaneshwar, Orissa's capital city.
Marandi told the court that he was getting ready to go to bed when he heard the terrified screams of children from the nearby church. He ran to the church and saw a group of 30 people attacking the missionary's jeep and another vehicle parked in the church yard.
The screams were those of the Staines children from inside the jeep, he told the court.
Marandi said he watched as the mob set fire to the two vehicles but could not do anything because he was frightened, and he returned home.
When he returned 20 minutes later, the mob had dispersed but the two vehicles were still burning and some people were trying to douse the flames, Marandi said.
When asked by Mahendranath Patnaik, the trial judge, Marandi identified the six men from the accused who were present in the court.
Marandi, 24, who became a Christian nine years ago, said he knew the Staines family from his childhood.
Marandi told the court he was not aware of any tension between Hindu and Christian villagers in Manoharpur before the incident.