TWO months ago deaf British charity worker Ian Stillman was jailed for ten years in India. STEPHEN LEWIS speaks to his York parents about Ian's

extraordinary story.

ON JUNE 2, Roy and Monica Stillman had a telephone call. It was from their son, Ian. The profoundly deaf 50-year-old charity worker, who for 30 years had been working with deaf people in India, had just been sentenced to ten years in prison by an Indian court for possession of cannabis - a charge he denies to this day.

He had been given a few hours to say his goodbyes to family - his Indian wife Yesumani (known as Sue), sisters Alison and Elspeth, and Elspeth's husband Jerry, all of whom had been in court for his sentence - before being led away to prison.

Talking to Ian on the phone is never easy. His deafness means he can't hear what is said in return. The one-way conversation must have made that phone call even more heart-rending for his parents.

"He said: 'I'm all right. This matter is in God's hands, now. Don't worry,'" says Roy, speaking from the sitting room of his home in Tadcaster Road. "He repeated that about four or five times."

Roy says that, given the circumstances, their son seemed remarkably upbeat. He and his wife haven't been able to speak to him since; but a fax, dated July 7 and written from his prison cell at Kanda jail, near Shimla in India's northern Himachal Pradesh region, shows him still to be in remarkably good heart.

"This morning, I lay in bed, writing my faxes to Sue and Elspeth," Ian wrote. "I am lucky to have a bed, good lighting for reading and writing, and a small cell. Being able to study and think without too much distraction is much easier."

Ian's family are now pinning hopes of his early release on his appeal, scheduled for September 24. They believe he must be released then because there has, they say, been a huge miscarriage of justice. There is no way Ian, well-known in India for his lifetime's work with deaf people, would have put all that at risk by using or dealing in cannabis.

"Ian has never used cannabis," says Alison, 51, now back in Britain. "Everything about justice would indicate that he must go free."

Ian's story is an extraordinary one. Profoundly deaf since the age of three, he was brought up to be fiercely independent by his headteacher father Roy and mother Monica, a nurse.

Following one-to-one tuition until the age of nine, and spells in a series of private and Quaker schools, he took his O-levels at Brixton College then went on to do a diploma in art and design.

Then, at 22, deaf but a proficient lip-reader, he set off for Myelapore, south of Madras, to work in a school for the deaf.

He has been in India ever since, setting up his own centre for the deaf at Nambikkai, on the country's southern tip.

India is a country in which deaf people are treated almost as outcasts. "It's all to do with the notion of karma," says Alison. "It's a punishment to come back re-incarnated as a handicapped person. So deaf people are seen as not worth very much."

Ian was determined to change all that. His centre teaches deaf people that they do have value, and gives them skills to enable them to make a living.

Over the years, the dedicated charity worker became half-Indian, says his father. He married Yesumani, had two children, sat on a number of national commissions working with the deaf in India, and by the time he was arrested, on August 28 last year, was well-respected.

He was in Himachal Pradesh, his family say, to explore the possibility of setting up a second project for deaf people. On the evening of his arrest, he had been for a meal with contacts. On the way back to his hotel, the car in which he was travelling with two other people was stopped by police, and searched. To his utter disbelief, Ian found himself charged with possession of 20kgs of cannabis.

It was past midnight. Profoundly deaf, and physically disabled since the loss of his right leg in a car accident in India six years ago, he must scarcely have known what was happening, his parents say. He was taken to the local police station in Kullu, where police produced a green bag containing 20kgs of cannabis, saying they had found it in the car in which Ian was travelling.

His family says Ian was then pressured by police speaking Hindi - a language he wouldn't have understood even if he had been able to hear what they were saying - into signing a document, also in Hindi. It was effectively a confession.

Ian's initial reaction was that it was a mistake and would be quickly cleared up. He was taken to a holding cell in Kullu - and there he remained for eight months while his case dragged its way through the courts.

He wasn't mistreated, his family stress, and despite sharing a tiny cell with up to 20 other prisoners, the conditions in which he kept were not too bad. But it was 90 days before his charges were even read out in court. Then there were further delays before the defence and prosecution were allowed to put their cases.

During all that time, says Alison, Ian never had the chance to stand up in court and say 'I didn't do it'. He was never given an interpreter, and the only chance he had to make his case was by providing written answers to pre-prepared questions in English. Even then, Alison says, he was unable to deny having cannabis. "The questions presumed that he had it," she says.

Eventually, on June 2, after months of delay, Ian's trial was brought to a sudden conclusion.

"It all happened so quickly," says Alison. "We didn't know what had happened. We waited from 10am until lunchtime. Then they called us into court, there was a bit of shuffling about, and we were out. The lawyer said 'The judge has found against him, it's ten years.'"

SO what really did happen that fateful August 28? Part of the answer may lie in Himachal Pradesh itself.

It's a remote upland region in the foothills of the Himalayas, well-known to backpackers as a trekker's paradise. But there's a darker side to Himachal Pradesh, too.

A series of murders and disappearances of foreign travellers have earned the region the nickname The Valley Of Death.

Then there are the drugs. Cannabis grows in Himachal Pradesh the way cow parsley grows here, says Alison - and it's use is widespread among local people and backpackers alike.

Ian's family believes he was simply nave: and that in his eagerness to make contact with people who could help him set up a new centre for the deaf, he unwittingly fell in with the wrong people.

They believe something else, too: that during his trial he may also have fallen victim to the very prejudice he has spent his whole life fighting.

"The judge didn't want him to speak," says Roy. "Deaf people in India cannot speak. They are rejected as outcasts."

That would be the ultimate irony.

Updated: 10:25 Friday, August 10, 2001