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LONDON - Daisy Angus dreamed of seeing the world during her gap-year travels. Instead the young fitness instructor from Bournemouth spent nearly five years in an Indian jail cell accused, and eventually convicted, of smuggling 10kg of cannabis.
During that time she was taken to hospital several times
after contracting malaria. Her father, John, died of leukaemia and her mother, Nadine, fought an expensive and heartbreaking battle to free her, travelling to India whenever possible to be with her daughter and protest her innocence.
Yesterday, the young woman, now 26, who learned Hindi while in jail and taught her fellow inmates English, declared herself "over the moon" after all three of her convictions were quashed by the High Court in Mumbai.
"Knowing that I was innocent and that justice would eventually prevail is one of the things I have clung on to during the past five gruelling years," she said.
She paid tribute to her family, particularly her mother who launched her appeal last year. "I just haven't been able to stop hugging her since coming out of jail," she said.
Supporters of Angus insisted throughout her ordeal that she was duped into acting as an unwitting drug mule by her Israeli travelling companion and co-accused.
Her lawyer, Mahesh Jethmalani, said the court had arrived at the decision after ruling the original verdict was based on the wrong facts.
He said the trial judges, who heard evidence from 50 witnesses during the 2006 hearing, had "erroneously appropriated the evidence".
Angus was sentenced to 10 years in jail after being arrested at Mumbai airport in November 2002. She was also fined 200,000 rupees ($6480) and told she faced a further two years in prison should she fail to pay.
She had been preparing to board a KLM flight to Berlin with a friend, Yoram Kadesh, from Haifa. The couple had first encountered each other over the internet in 1999 but had met up only a few days before their arrest.
The British woman insisted the bag that contained the seven slabs of drugs in a secret compartment belonged to him and claimed that the tag matched his ticket. She said he had given her the bag after her own ripped and was unaware of its contents.
But the Israeli was acquitted after the court found that there was insufficient evidence to link him to the haul discovered by members of the Indian Air Intelligence Bureau.
Friend Tessa Lawless, from Bournemouth, said Angus had "every good attribute you can think of".
"I just couldn't believe it. Night after night I've been praying for her to come out. She was set up. She has been set free as an innocent person."
- INDEPENDENT
