A JUDGE today told defence attorneys to wind up their arguments in the long-running trial into the 1999 murder in eastern India of an Australian missionary and his two young sons.
Fourteen suspects have been charged in the murder of Graham Staines and his sons, Philip, 10, and Timothy, 8, who were burnt alive as they slept in their jeep in a remote tribal village. All 14 have pleaded innocent. They face the death penalty if convicted.
Defence attorneys were to conclude their arguments yesterday, but had asked for more time. Judge Mahendranath Patnaik gave them until tomorrow to finish their arguments, but warned he wouldn't tolerate repetition.
"You repeated what you had said yesterday. No repetition of statements will be allowed," he told Gyana Acharya, a defence attorney.
Patnaik is expected to take one month to write his judgment. The trial began in March 2001.
Acharya alleged the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's FBI, had framed the accused using statements by false eyewitnesses.
The Staines' murder occurred on the night of January 22, 1999, in Manoharpur, a remote tribal village about 230 kms north of the Orissa state capital, Bhubaneshwar.
The killing was one of a series of attacks against missionaries and Christian institutions. It was attributed at the time to right-wing Hindus who claimed that impoverished Hindus were being unfairly induced to convert.