New Delhi, India - The man convicted of killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in India has appealed against his conviction to the Supreme Court.
Dara Singh's sentence had previously been commuted from the death penalty to life in jail. He argues his presence at the murder site was presumed.
Graham Staines and his sons were burned alive in 1999 in a remote village in eastern India.
Thirteen people were convicted of their murder in September 2003.
Dara Singh's petition, filed by his lawyer Sibo Sankar Mishra to the Supreme Court, says: "The conviction of Dara is solely on the basis of mere presumption, which is contrary to the principles of criminal justice and devoid of law."
'Unlawful assembly'
The High Court in the eastern state of Orissa commuted Singh's sentence in May saying there was no evidence to suggest it was the individual act of Dara Singh that was responsible for the death of Mr Staines and his sons.
The court also ordered the release of 11 of the 12 other people convicted of the killings.
It upheld a life sentence for Singh on the grounds that he was part of an "unlawful assembly" that carried out the murder.
Mr Staines had spent 30 years working with leprosy patients in Orissa. His widow, Gladys, remained in India until July 2004.
At the time of the murder, Christian community leaders accused a militant Hindu group, the Bajrang Dal, of responsibility.
However, an official inquiry published in 1999 found that there was no evidence that any one group was behind the attack.
The Wadhwa Commission held Singh personally responsible and said that his motive was to stop the conversion of tribal communities to Christianity.
The judge in the murder trial agreed with this explanation.
"He formed a militant group of local tribals to physically liquidate Staines in the belief that with Staines the spread of Christianity will be buried in the area.
"The rest of the convicts who are gullible tribals blindly followed him," Judge Mahendra Pattnaik had said.