DEAF and disabled charity worker Ian Stillman said today he believes he spent two years in jail as the victim of a "set-up".

Ian gained early release from a ten-year prison sentence in December after huge public protest against his conviction for cannabis possession.

Speaking from his parents' home in Tadcaster Road, York, he said: "I don't have any hard facts, but my feeling is that the whole thing was a set-up. There was a man, a contact, that I was having dinner with before I was arrested. I didn't know him well and I sometimes wonder if he was involved in the whole thing.

"But it could have been arranged by somebody higher up in authority. I know this region had problems with drugs, and the Indian Government had recently been warned by the British that it had to do something. Maybe they wanted to make me an example, to say to the British that it was westerners who were causing the problems."

Ian, 53, who moved to India 30 years ago to work with the country's deaf population, was jailed for ten years after being found with 20 kilograms of cannabis. He denies any knowledge of the drug.

He said he was not allowed to understand what was going on. Despite being deaf and not speaking Hindi, he was denied a sign language translator at his arrest, and even at his trial.

He was never allowed to make a statement to court. After he was arrested, he was met by a BBC camera crew that was usually based ten hours drive away in Delhi.

"They must have been told to expect something a long time before I was arrested," he said. "When I was sentenced it wasn't really a surprise. I felt that everything fitted in place then."

Full interview

Updated: 11:09 Wednesday, July 09, 2003