Bhubaneswar: The trial of Graham Staines murder case at the court of the district and sessions judge, M N Patnaik, took a new turn on February 14 with the defence seeking recall of 16 prosecution witnesses for re-examination.

The defence counsel who filed three petitions seeking recall of the witnesses, also pleaded for recall of the investigating officer of the prosecuting agency, CBI.

While one petition filed before the court alleged that four of the witnesses had deliberately given false evidence to mislead the court, two other separate applications sought the recall of nine and seven witnesses respectively.

The court reserved its order on the petitions till tomorrow (Feb 15).

The petition filed by all defence counsels said that Paul Murmu, Mathai Marandi, Raghunath Dehury and Solomon Marandi, all residents of Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district, had also appeared as witnesses before the Justice Wadhwa Commission which inquired into the killing of Staines, an Australian missionary, and his two minor sons at the village on the night of January 22, 1999.

These witnesses had given different versions while implicating some of the accused persons and there could be no doubt that they had intentionally given false evidence before the court, the defence counsel Shymananda Mohapatra said.

The CBI counsel K Sudhakar said that the proceedings of the judicial commission, which probed into the incident should not be linked to the present trial and thereby delay the trial further.

Examination of all the prosecution witnesses was completed on January 27, 2002.

Requesting the court to call for the records, examine them and draw up proceedings against the four witnesses, the defence counsels said that the same should be disposed off in accordance with the law.

The other two petitions filed by the defence counsels, Banabihari Mohanty and Gyanendra Acharya, who sought the recall of nine and eight of the prosecution witnesses already examined, said inadvertently due to oversight and lack of instruction the defence could not put some material questions to the witnesses during cross-examination. Names of some witnesses had been mentioned in both the petitions.

Unless the questions were permitted to be put to the witnesses on recall, the accused persons would be seriously prejudiced and the truth might not be revealed, they said.

The points of questions required to be put to the above named prosecution witnesses by way of cross-examination included material contradiction, spot, presence of the witness at the spot and enmity between the Hindu and Christian community, the two petitions said.

PTI