North Yorkshire arms dealer Peter Bleach fears he is being abandoned in an Indian jail while those arrested with him receive help from their own government. MIKE LAYCOCK reports.

ARMS dealer Peter Bleach fears he could languish in a "cooking-pot" Indian jail for up to a decade before his appeal against a life sentence is heard.

And he claims the British Government is doing nothing to assist his battle for justice - in "staggering" contrast to the Russian Government's attempts to help its five citizens who are also in jail.

The former St Peter's School pupil, formerly of Fylingthorpe near Whitby, has given a graphic description of his plight in Calcutta's Presidency Correctional Centre in a letter to an old school friend, Richard Stansfield, of Bulmer, near York, which has been passed on to the Evening Press.

In the letter, Bleach claimed:

Temperatures in the jail were so high that, "unless you remain absolutely still, the sweat simply pours off in torrents...It is like a cooking pot." He said it was even difficult to type because the keys became so slippery from the sweat.

The law moved painfully slowly in India, and it was normal for appeals to take up to ten years to be heard. "Justice is done in the end, but not until the person's life is mostly down the drain."

He had written to Home Secretary Jack Straw to complain about evidence given at the trial by British police officers, but Mr Straw had replied that he had "not seen any evidence of wrong-doing."

Bleach, 48, whose mother Oceana lives at Brompton-by-Sawdon, near Scarborough, was arrested more than four years ago on suspicion of dropping arms and ammunition to an insurgent group in West Bengal to stir up armed conflict. He claimed that the drop was part of a plan approved of by British intelligence services, but police claimed they advised him to pull out of the operation.

He was jailed for life in February by an Indian court after being convicted of conspiracy to commit offences against the Indian Government. He had escaped the death penalty after being cleared of attempting to wage war against India.

In his letter, he revealed that he now has a petition pending before the Supreme Court in Delhi asking for it to intervene on the grounds that the Calcutta High Court was deliberately delaying things. But he said nothing would happen for a while because virtually all courts were on holiday for the summer.

Ryedale MP John Greenway, who asked Foreign Office ministers what they were doing to assist Bleach, was told in a letter from Parliamentary Under Secretary Baroness Scotland that, with Bleach's appeal pending, the Foreign Office could not consider making representations until the legal process had been exhausted.

"International law does not allow the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to interfere in the official procedures of other sovereign states, just as we would not tolerate other countries interfering in our own judicial procedures."

Mr Greenway said that if it was true that Bleach had acted with the support of the British authorities, the British Government should be doing more to help him.

A Foreign Office spokesman said it had pressed the Indian authorities to ensure Bleach's safety in jail, but reiterated that it could not interfere in the Indian justice system.

PICTURE: Arms dealer Peter Bleach, centre in jacket, is escorted to jail with a fellow gun runner after a life sentence was handed down. Bleach says his co-accused are receiving help from their government