In jail, Vikram Buddhi speaks to NDTV

Chicago: NDTV has met with Vikram Buddhi - the PhD student jailed in the US for allegedly posting hate messages against former President George Bush on the Internet in 2006. This is the first time Vikram is meeting with any journalist to tell us his side of the story since he was arrested three and a half years ago. Buddhi's sentencing is due on December 10. He spoke with NDTV's Sarah Jacob in prison today.

For a man who is just days away from his sentencing, Vikram Buddhi is surprisingly calm.

The 38-year old who has spent the last 3 and a half years of his life locked up in this federal prison in Chicago says he is filing a petition that the charges against him are false and the trial was unfair.

NDTV's Sarah Jacob sat across Vikram Buddhi in the visitor's room of the metropolitan correctional center in Chicago.  A small and unassuming man, she could barely hear him above the din of a room full of inmates meeting their loved ones.  Clad in the florescent orange prison jumpsuit, Vikram was soft spoken but exuded a quiet confidence. He admitted that the first 6 months he spent in this jail he was extremely depressed and had lost all hope. But since then he has found inner strength to fight and is determined to prove his innocence.

In June 2007, a jury found Vikram, a PhD student of mathematics at Purdue University, guilty of posting online threats against former President George W. Bush. 3 ½ years later, he has still to be sentenced. Without a sentence no appeal can be filed.

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An Indian national, alone in the US, Vikram says he has become just a number in the system.

His government appointed lawyer has shown no interest in fighting his case.

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"The past three years have been an ordeal for me. I have been wrongly and unfairly convicted. There is no prima facie violation of any law in my case," he told NDTV.

His time behind bars has been spent studying law from a poorly stocked prison.

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Indians in the United States especially those in academia are used to being treated as high achievers in their adopted homeland. Vikram Buddhi however has seen a different side of a society he thought of as being open, free and law abiding. Denied protection under free speech laws, given inadequate legal representation and left to languish in prison for over three years, this PHD student's American dream has turned into a nightmare.