Search the Internet          Tips

'Bid to Frame UK Aid Worker's Son'

The son of the disabled British aid worker who was convicted in Kulu last month for drug smuggling says Himachal police offered him charas in an alleged attempt to frame him.

Lennie Stillman, 25, has been in Simla since last August after his father, Ian, was arrested for allegedly handling 20 kilograms of charas during a trip to Manali in the Kulu Valley.

Lennie has told his father's sister in England,Elspeth Dugdale, how earlier this year he rejected a police offer to supply him with charas. Six weeks later a police squad raided his hotel room in Simla for drugs. Nothing was found in the raid which was witnessed by Lennie and the hotel owner who was asked to be present.

Details of the drug offer and the subsequent police raid were passed on by Lennie to Mrs Dugsdale. She told India Abroad that the information about the drugs offer and the subsequent police raid has been relayed to the British Foreign Office which has made energetic representations to the Indian government on behalf of Ian Stillman. In another development Indian High Commissioner to Britain Nareshwar Dayal has agreed to receive Mrs Dugdale today (Monday) to hear first hand her account of her brother's trial and incarceration.

Dugdale is leading the British campaign to free Stillman and has lobbied both British and European parliament MPs, as well as to newly appointed British Foreign Secretary Secretary Jack Straw.

Both Dayal and visiting Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra were taken aback by the strength of feeling expressed by Straw who received them at his office last week.

Foreign Office sources claim Straw did not question the 10 year sentence handed out to Stillman and only asked for an improvement in the living conditions of the charity worker who has an artificial leg and has been stone deaf since the age of two.

Privately, Straw is said to be extremely concerned at what he believes is a grave miscarriage of justice. His concerns have been strengthened following a report prepared by a panel of independent Indian lawyers who were asked by the British High Commission in Delhi to go over the transcript of Stillman's trial before a Himachel sessions judge.

According to sources in London the panel is alleged to have concluded that Stillman's trial was fundamentally flawed.

Stillman, who has repeatedly protested his innocence, has lived in India for the past 30 years and has an Indian wife, Yasumani, and two grown up children. The couple are founders of the Nambikkai Foundation for the deaf in Kanyakumari. Stillman was arrested last August when the taxi he was travelling in was stopped at a police roadblock near Manali where he said he had gone to look at a handicrafts project for Indian deaf children.

Police accused him of carrying a green bag containing 20 kilos of charas. But Stillman, who insists he does not use drugs, says an Israeli man he didn't know jumped out of the taxi carrying the green charas bag with him.

During his trial last year in from Sessions Judge Vaidya he said he could not follow the proceedings as he is unable to lip read in Hindi. Lennie Stillman, who did apply to interpret for his father, was ordered by the judge to sit behind the witness box where he could not be seen.

Kulu police superintendent N.Venu Gopal said in a statement to the media last week, "When the search was done of his belongings, the narcotics were found in his bag. He also ordered the taxi. His claim that the Real smuggler is an Israeli is totally false.

"With foreign nationals the courts take care that everything is proved beyond reasonable doubt. It was established that he understood everything. We refute all his allegations. "I cannot comment on what happened in the court room, but had the chance to make the same plea to the court."

British human rights campaigner Stephen Jakobi, founder of Fair Trials Abroad, said that in his opinion Stillman's treatment is "one of the worst miscarriages of justice" he has ever encountered.

Jakobi, who has experience of campaigning on judicial cases in India, said, "We are not criticising in any way the Indian judicial system. The Supreme Court in Delhi is among the most respected courts in the world, so too the appeals system. But at local level something here has gone terribly wrong.

"Its like trying to make a blind man read his own evidence into the court. They tried to get him to sign documents as though he had heard and understood the court case. All the money he was carrying for helping the local handicrafts trade - amounting to hundreds of pounds - disappeared, as did his personal valuables."

Jakobi added that Stillman was never allowed to present a proper defence, and the family's worry was that it might take several months if not years for the appeals process to run its course and his health would not be able to stand the strain.

Earlier Story:

Straw intervenes on behalf of Briton in Simla prison

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report