Peter Bleach is getting ready for freedom by exercising his legs. The 52-year-old Briton is pacing breathlessly up and down Calcutta's Alipore prison library where he spends most of the day instead of in the mosquito-infested, 4-metre-by- 2.5-metre cell to which he was confined until last month.
Bleach is no ordinary jailbird. Branded India's Criminal No1 by the country's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on his arrest in 1995, he was tried in 2000 and found guilty of waging war against India and sentenced to imprisonment in a high-security jail until 2014. His crime: air-dropping hundreds of AK-47s, thousands of rounds of ammunition, rocket launchers and anti-tank grenades over Purulia in West Bengal, in a shipment government prosecutors said was intended for a religious sect. 'Never in the history of India has such a crime been committed,' said trial judge P.K. Biswas while convicting Bleach.
But in a sudden about-face, New Delhi has just accepted the British government's request to release Bleach unconditionally.
The course of the Englishman's life changed dramatically after a London meeting between Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani and British Prime Minister Tony Blair late last month. Emerging from the marathon meeting - where Bleach was apparently on the agenda along with Iraq and Kashmir - Mr Advani announced that India's Law Ministry would review Bleach's case and submit a report to the government.
But senior officials say India has already agreed in principle to release Bleach. According to them, the Law Ministry has been entrusted to work out a procedure to set him free as soon as possible. 'Bleach's release is imminent. The paperwork started in earnest after Mr Advani gave his word to the British government,' said an official involved with the case.
A presidential pardon is most likely, say sources. Under Indian laws, the president can set a convict free or reduce a sentence on the government's recommendation.