Missionary's widow leaves India

Ms Staines says she has nothing against India

The widow of a murdered Australian missionary is leaving India after spending more than 20 years working among leprosy patients in one of the country's poorest states.

Her husband Graham and two sons, Philip, 10, and Timothy, eight, were burned alive by a mob in India in 1999.

Last year an Indian court sentenced one man to death and 12 others to life imprisonment over the killings.

Ms Staines said she wanted to spend more time with her 91-year-old father and her teenage daughter who wanted to study in an Australian university.

"I feel totally exhausted. I need time to reflect," she told journalists in Bombay (Mumbai).

She said she would come back to visit and keep her work going - last week she inaugurated a new 10-bed hospital named after her husband.

She added that she held nothing against India.

"I take back a lot of love from the people of this country," she said.

Forgiven

The man who was sentenced to death over the murders, Dara Singh, is said to have led a militant campaign against Christians and Muslims. However an investigation has found no evidence that hardline Hindu groups organised the attack on the Staines.

During the trial, Ms Staines said she had forgiven the killers.

Graham Staines had spent 30 years working with leprosy patients in Orissa.

He met Gladys in India in the early 1980s and they were married in 1983.

Both of them continued to work among leprosy patients in Mayurbhanj, a very poor district in the eastern state of Orissa.

The Staines died when the jeep they were sleeping in was torched outside a church in the remote village of Manoharpur in Orissa in January 1999.

The killings sparked condemnation in India and around the world.