WHEN THE call came, Saraswathi Vedam was in university in Massachusetts in 1982, halfway through her Master’s degree in community health education.Her younger brother, Subramanyam — “Subu” to family — was on the phone. He had been detained and, a few months later, accused of murdering a classmate. “He told me not to worry,” Saraswathi told The Indian Express. “He said, ‘They are just trying to pressure me. It’s going to be okay. Please don’t disturb Amma and Appa’s trip to Europe.’”But it wasn’t okay. Within hours, Saraswathi drove hundreds of miles south to State College, the college town that’s home to Penn State University’s main campus. It was where they had grown up, where their father K Vedam, a physics professor and later professor emeritus, and their mother Nalini, who ran a library, led the ideal diaspora life. “While driving home, I remember thinking the whole time that this couldn’t be real. He was 20. Just a kid,” she said on the phone from Vancouver, Canada, where she is Professor and Lead Investigator at University of British Columbia. A few months later, in 1983, Subu was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. It would take 43 years for his name to be cleared — in August this year, a Pennsylvania judge finally overturned his conviction, ruling that prosecutors had concealed thousands of pages of evidence that would have proved his innocence. By then, Subu had spent more than two-thirds of his life in prison. Subu with Saraswathi in their younger days. (Photo: Saraswathi Vedam)But when freedom came, it wasn’t real. Twenty-four hours after his exoneration, he was detained again, this time by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over deportation charges dating back to 1988 based on the murder conviction and a related drug offence. “I couldn’t even hug him,” Saraswathi said. “There was plexiglass between us. Yet, when I saw him, he stood up straight and said, ‘Akka, my name has been cleared. I’m not a prisoner anymore, I’m a detained man.’”Story continues below this ad Immigration lawyer Ava Benach, who is representing him at the Board of Immigration Appeals, told the Associated Press, “He was someone who’s suffered a profound injustice… Forty-three years of wrongful imprisonment more than makes up for the possession with intent to distribute LSD when he was 20 years old.” The administration, however, is opposing any attempt by his lawyers to reopen the deportation case and drop the charges. “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email to AP. ‘It was a gentle life’ While Sarsawati was born in State College, Subu was born in Mumbai in 1961, when the family was briefly back in India. They returned to State College nine months later. “My parents were dreamers,” Saraswathi said. “Appa was a physicist; Amma founded the town’s first library, Schlow Memorial, while she was pregnant with me. The library still stands. They believed in service, in Gandhian nonviolence, in building something new.”Story continues below this ad Subu with his sister Saraswathi and her daughters. (Photo: Saraswathi Vedam)In the basement of their State College home, Saraswathi’s mother hosted Sunday story hours for children who sat cross-legged to hear tales from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. “We were Indian and American,” Saraswathi said. “Appa wore suits, Amma wore saris. We spoke Tamil at home and did Friday puja, but also went to Quaker meetings and Western classical concerts. It was a gentle life.” Subu grew up in that world: “bookish, kind, idealistic”. By his late teens, he was working as a lab technician at Penn State, taking classes part-time, and, like many young people, experimenting with the counterculture of the late 1970s – long hair, music and drugs. “He was idealistic,” she said. “He thought marijuana should be legal and that punishing people for it was unjust. He was never violent. Always peaceful.” In 1981, just months before her parents left for Germany on sabbatical, the family had celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. “Subu and I planned the whole surprise party,” Saraswathi said, smiling faintly. “He cut off his long hair, put it in an envelope, and mailed it to them as a gift. It was his way of saying, ‘See, Appa, I’m growing up.’”Story continues below this ad “They left for Germany thinking everything was fine,” she said. “That their son was on his path, working, studying.” Months later, Subu was arrested, accused of murdering his classmate, Tom Kinser. ‘The case broke Appa’ In December 1980, 19-year-old Kinser had gone missing. Investigators found that he was last seen with Subu – he had asked Kinser for a ride to Lewisburg, an hour away from the university town. His remains were found in the woods nine months later. While police investigated the case, Subu was initially detained on drug charges.Story continues below this ad When her parents returned from Germany, her father rushed to arrange bail for his son. “Appa went to put up our house as collateral,” Saraswathi said. “He thought, fine, we’ll get him out, we’ll find a lawyer.” But when he reached the courthouse to sign over the deed, the police added a murder charge and, with it, the option of bail vanished. “He was stunned,” she said. “They took away even the chance to bring his son home. There was no weapon, no witness, no motive, no date of death.” When the case went to trial, the local press called him “the foreigner likely to flee. Our father’s name, Vedam, ran in every headline.” “It broke Appa,” Saraswathi said. “He was the gentlest man I’ve ever known. He blamed himself for staying in America.” Subu was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to life without parole. The family spent decades trying to prove his innocence. Saraswathi says her father, a scientist, filled notebooks calculating bullet trajectory, insisting the prosecution’s version “made no physical sense.” Her mother, who never missed a Monday visit to prison, became a pillar for their family. “My mother made sure nobody forgot my brother,” Saraswathi said.Story continues below this ad Subu was 20 when he was arrested in a murder case. It would take another 43 years for him to be acquitted. (Photo: Saraswathi Vedam)Inside prison, Subu became a teacher. He created a literacy programme that the Pennsylvania prison system continues to use, earned three degrees, including in Finance and an MBA in leadership, and mentored many inmates. “Every time we visited, someone would come up and say, ‘Because of your brother, my husband got his GED (General Educational Development Test),’” she said. He stayed in prison as his parents aged, sister married, and nieces grew up. “When my four daughters were born, I would take them to meet him in prison. He held them, and he always smiled,” she said. Their father died in 2009, and their mother in 2016. “Neither lived to see his name cleared,” she said. ‘My name has been cleared’Story continues below this ad In 2021, the Innocence Project of Pennsylvania, an organisation that provides free legal aid to wrongfully convicted individuals in Pennsylvania, took up Subu’s case. Two years later, they brought on board Gopal Balachandran, a Penn State law professor, who uncovered over 3,500 pages of “suppressed evidence” in the case: forensic records, witness interviews, including an FBI report that suggested the bullet wound was too small to have been fired from a gun that was allegedly used in the murder. In his ruling vacating Subu’s conviction, the Centre County judge found that prosecutors had “knowingly misled the jury regarding the forensic evidence presented at trial and failed in [their] constitutional duty to correct false or misleading testimony.” In August 2025, when the judge ruled in Subu’s favour, Saraswathi heard the news in New Zealand. “I was asleep when my daughter called. She said, ‘Amma, wake up. We won.’ I thought I was dreaming. I was crying and laughing at the same time… crying because my parents weren’t here and Subu had lost so much,” she said. On October 2, the charges were dropped. The prison yard erupted in applause. Guards and inmates hugged him, Saraswathi said. “For one day, he was free,” she said. “Then ICE came.”Story continues below this ad Now, Subu sits in an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania, awaiting a hearing that will decide whether he can stay in the only country he has ever known. “It’s absurd,” Saraswathi said. “He’s not a threat. He is a man who has spent his life helping others, who was exonerated after 43 years. What more proof of integrity do they need?” Still, when she saw him behind the plexiglass again, he smiled. “He said, ‘We have to focus on the truth, Akka. My name has been cleared.’” Saraswathi’s daughters continue to write to their uncle. One of them recently had a baby girl named Fiona Subu, named after him. “He’s lost his parents, his youth, his career, everything,” Saraswathi said. “But he never lost his dignity. He’s the most extraordinary person I know…. All he ever wanted was to come home. And now if they send him back to India, he will again be pushed away from all of us, from his home with us, here.”