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 authorities 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 of Common Pleas vacated Vedam’s conviction, stating that “had that evidence been available at the time, there would have been a reasonable probability that the jury’s judgement would have been affected”, reported Miami Herald.

On October 2, District Attorney Cantorna announced that it was dropping charges against Vedam and would not pursue a new trial.

As he walked out of jail on October 3, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement took Vedam into custody, citing his drug conviction at the age of 19. The order was so far dormant as he was serving a life sentence.

“ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations] notes that Mr Vedam, a career criminal with a rap sheet dating back to 1980, is also a convicted controlled substance trafficker,” the immigration authorities told Miami Herald.

It added that Vedam will be held in ICE custody while the agency makes arrangements for him to be deported.

Vedam’s lawyer, Ava Benach, was quoted as saying by Firstpost that the immigration case would have been resolved earlier had he not been wrongfully convicted in the murder case.

Benach said that ​​deporting Vedam “to a country where he has few connections would represent another terrible wrong”, reported India Today.

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