Gladys Staines comes out of a Bhubaneswar court on Friday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 24: Gladys Staines, the widow of Australian missionary Graham Staines, who was killed by a group of people in Keonjhar district 15 years ago, today testified before the district and sessions court giving her account of the incident.

The trial of the two accused, who were arrested last May, is on. CBI public prosecutor K.P. Mishra said Gladys was one of the witnesses summoned by the court.

Sixty-two-year-old Gladys, who was awarded the Padma Shree by India in 2005 for her service to leprosy patients in Keonjhar district, is the 35th witness to be examined by the court in this case.

“She was in the court for around one-and-a-half hours,” said Mishra.

Defence lawyer Banabihari Mohanty said 90 witnesses had been listed, of whom 35 have deposed so far. The next date for hearing of the case is February 5. The accused duo, Ghanashyam Mahant, 37, and Ramjan Mahant, 34, were arrested on May 17 last year.

The two were absconding since January 22, 1999, when a violent mob of religious fanatics burnt alive Graham Staines and his two minor sons — Phillip and Timothy — at Manoharpur village in Keonjhar district. The mob suspected Staines of being engaged in forcible conversions.

A joint team of the CBI and police arrested Ghanashyam and Ramjan.

The CBI, which had taken charge of the case from state crime branch, charge-sheeted 18 persons. When the trial started, three persons, including these two and one Budhi Nayak, were at large. Budhi is still absconding.

The lower court had convicted 13 persons, including the main accused Dara Singh alias Ravindra Kumar Pal, who was awarded the death sentence.

In 2005, the high court had acquitted 11 others, while commuting the death sentence awarded to Dara to life imprisonment. The court retained the life imprisonment awarded to another accused, Mahendra.

In January 2011, the Supreme Court upheld the life imprisonment of both Dara and Mahendra.

Since the death of her husband, Gladys and her daughter Esther has been spending most of her time in Australia. But she visits Odisha once in a while to oversee the anti-leprosy project in Baripada.