MIAMI, Fla. — Federal immigration agents have detained a 64-year-old man who spent more than four decades in prison for a wrongful murder conviction, threatening him with deportation to India just days after his release.
According to Common Dreams, Subranmayan Vedam was released from prison on Oct. 3 after a court ruled that prosecutors had “concealed evidence” that could “undermine” the state’s case against him.
As the outlet reports, Vedam was initially arrested in 1982 at age 19 for the murder of his friend, who was shot with a .25-caliber pistol. The Pennsylvania Innocence Project later uncovered evidence suggesting that prosecutors had withheld an FBI report three years earlier. The Miami Herald reported that the evidence indicated “the bullet wound in Kinser’s [the victim’s] skull was too small to have been caused by a .25-caliber bullet.”
Shortly after the court ordered his release, Vedam was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, according to Common Dreams. ICE officials reportedly cited a decades-old deportation order that was “based on [the] murder conviction.”
Vedam is currently being held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center while being processed for deportation to India. The Miami Herald reported that Vedam’s family said he had “only spent nine months” in India before immigrating to the U.S., where he has lived the rest of his life.
In an interview with the Miami Herald, Vedam’s niece, Zoë Miller Vedam, said, “He hasn’t been there for over 44 years, and the people he knew when he went as a child have passed away. His whole family—his sister, his nieces, his grand-nieces—we’re all U.S. citizens, and we all live here.”
According to Common Dreams, the Centre Daily Times published a story in early October describing Vedam as an exemplary inmate who “designed and led a prison literacy training program, raised money for Big Brothers Big Sisters, tutored hundreds of inmates and was the first person in the prison’s history to earn a master’s degree.”
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