He spent 28 years in prison for murder. Then prosecutors found out he had been a juvenile at the time of the crime.
Twenty five years ago, a teenage boy in India was wrongly sentenced to death as an adult for murder. In March, the Supreme Court freed him after confirming that he was a juvenile at the time of the incident. Soutik Biswas travelled to Jalabsar village in the state of Rajasthan to meet the man, now 41.
In March, India's Supreme Court finally ended Niranaram's three-decade long ordeal, involving three courts, countless hearings, changing laws, appeals, a mercy petition, age determination tests and a search for his birth date papers. What eventually saved him was an entry in an old register in his village school showing his date of birth as 1 February 1982. There was also a school transfer certificate with dates of his joining and leaving the school and a certificate from the village council head attesting that Narayan and Niranaram were the same person.
"Why did this happen to me? I lost the prime of my life because of a simple mistake," Niranaram, a tall and wiry man with sunken eyes, told me.AFPIn 1998, while sentencing Niranaram and a co-accused - who remains in prison, serving a life term - the court said it was a "rarest of the rare case". While freeing him last month, the Supreme Court mulled whether a 12-year-old boy could "commit such a gruesome crime".
No friendships were forged with fellow prisoners because I was "too scared", he said. He decided to fight isolation by teaching himself. He studied endlessly, wrote exams in his cramped and humid cell and finished school. He picked up a master's degree in sociology and was preparing for another in political science when he was freed.
The night before her long-lost son returned home, his seventy-something mother joined the celebrations by dancing to music blared by a DJ from a rented pickup truck with towering speakers. But when Anni Devi finally came to face to face with Niranaram, tears flowed - and both could not understand what the other was saying. Image caption,When Niranaram left the prison on a clear, sunny day in late March, he realised "how much India had changed".
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