BHUBANESHWAR, India - A police officer testifying in the trial of 14 villagers accused of burning alive an Australian missionary and his two young sons said Tuesday that he found singed straw under the jeep in which the three died in flames.
The testimony supported earlier statements by witnesses who said that they had seen a crowd using straw pulled from thatched roofs in the village to start the fire, which claimed the life of Graham Stewart Staines and his sons three years ago.
Staines, 58, and the boys — Philip, 10, and Timothy, 8 — were sleeping outside a church in Manoharpur, a remote village in the eastern state of Orissa, on Jan. 23, 1999 when a crowd began beating on their jeep, then set it on fire.
Sarat Chandra Bala, a deputy superintendent of police, told the court that he had found some half-burned straw under the jeep and another vehicle parked nearby that was also torched. Both were parked in front of the church, he said.
Bala led a preliminary probe into the death before the Indian government asked federal investigations to handle the case.
At the time of the incident, anti-Christian sentiment had been on the rise in the region, and the killing of the Australian missionary followed several other attacks on Christians. Christians comprise about 2 percent of India's more than 1 billion predominantly Hindu people.
If convicted, the accused could face death by hanging.