US: Indian-origin man found innocent after 43 years in jail faces deportation

A 64-year-old man of Indian origin, who was found innocent in a murder case on October 2 after spending 43 years in jail in the United States’ Pennsylvania, has been detained by the country’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is facing deportation.

The immigration authority cited a “legacy deportation order” from the 1980s, linked to an earlier conviction of Subramanyam Vedam on drug charges, for its action, reported Miami Herald.

The man has filed a petition to stay the deportation.

Vedam had arrived in the US from India with his parents in 1962 when he was nine months old. He was arrested in 1982 for the murder of his friend, 19-year-old Thomas Kinser.

Kinser was reported missing in December 1980 and his remains were found in September 1981, with a bullet wound in his skull.

Prosecutors had alleged that Vedam shot Kinser with a .25-caliber pistol, reported Miami Herald. The weapon was never recovered. Vedam was convicted twice, in 1983 and 1988, and sentenced to life without parole.

However, in 2022, lawyers associated with the non-profit organisation Pennsylvania Innocence Project found documents, including a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which showed that the bullet wound in Kinser’s skull was too small to have been caused by a .25-caliber bullet.

Based on this, in August, the Centre County Court...

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