MUMBAI: The father of jailed Indian researcher and lecturer Vikram Buddhi has sought prime minister Manmohan Singh's urgent intervention, seeking justice for his son who has been jailed in the US despite completing his 57-month jail term on May 6. Buddhi was jailed for allegedly threatening to kill former president George W Bush.In his latest letter to the PMO and also the ministry of external affairs, Vikram's distraught father Captain B K Subbarao has pointed out several glaring instances of deliberate discrimination during the court trial of Vikram. "Indian graduate student and PhD mathematics scholar Vikram Buddhi has already served the full 57-month jail term, but he is still held behind bars by the immigration department which has the power to deport him. I have urged our prime minister to at least now provide him with legal assistance in the US so that he can appeal against this unfair court verdict and clear his name,'' said Captain Subbarao, former naval officer and now a Supreme Court advocate.
Pointing at the recent case of handcuffing of 18-year-old Krittika Biswas, daughter of an Indian diplomat in New York, Subbarao noted: "Krittika was pushed into a US police lock-up and forced to confess about sending obscene emails to her school teacher in New York. However, it was all the more surprising how top MEA officials worked through the night to intervene in the case of Krittika who was jailed for one day. But, in Vikram's case there was no sincere help or intervention from the Indian government in the last four-and-half years.''
Also, while in Krittika's case the actual email offender was later found to be a male student of Chinese origin, the real author of the threatening Internet messages in Vikram's case was never properly confirmed, he said. "I have written to the PM solely because it is a matter of grave concern to all Indians settled in America. The bias and unfair trial that Vikram had to suffer for nearly five years can be faced by any other Indian as well. If our leaders don't stand up to this now, then god save us in the American system,'' said Subbarao.
Firstly, he stated, that the very indictment (charge) against Vikram is faulty as it simply does not mention the term 'internet messages', which were supposedly first noticed by the US Secret Service (USSS) police. This, he added, was deliberately done because an internet message usually constitutes protected speech under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. "As the indictment (charge) against Vikram was defective, it should have fallen on its own during trial, and as such he would have been freed. Secondly, the trial judge had conducted another illegality by attempting to cure an already invalid indictment by allowing the government to bring in the alleged internet messages later on during the court trial,'' said Subbarao. The judge also came down heavily on the lawyer of Vikram by saying that he would be "embarrassed'' in the court if he tried to link the case to the First Amendment (as mentioned in the trial transcript volume IV, June 28, 2007 , pages 4-6), he said.
"It shows the defence attorney was prevented from defending Vikram fully and properly. All these factors clearly show that Vikram was discriminated against as the proper justice process was not followed during his trial,'' he added.
Apart from the glaring invalid indictment which he has repeatedly brought to the notice of top US officials, including the US Attorney General Eric Holder, Subbarao has also questioned why Vikram had to be put in prison for over 57 months despite the US Secret Service Police having formally reported that Vikram was "not a threat'' to any of the US leaders of that time.
Vikram, a National Science Talent Scholar in India, is an MSc in mathematics from IIT-B. He worked for a year at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research at Mumbai and then joined the mathematics department of Purdue University in the US in 1996. At Purdue he received the MS degree in mathematics and had been pursuing PhD degrees simultaneously in pure and applied mathematics. At Purdue University Vikram received two times Best Teaching Award from the Department of Mathematics.
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