Who is Subramanyam Vedam, the Indian-origin man wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years and now facing deportation?

For 43 years, Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam lived behind the walls of a Pennsylvania state prison for a crime he did not commit.

When his wrongful conviction was finally overturned this year, the 64-year-old Indian-origin man was expected to walk into freedom.

Instead, he was taken into custody once again — this time by US immigration authorities, who are seeking to deport him to India, a country he has not known since infancy.

Vedam’s story — stretching from a 1980 murder case in rural Pennsylvania to a decades-old immigration order now revived against him — has become one of the most extraordinary and tragic sagas in the American criminal justice system.

What we know about Subu’s wrongful conviction

The chain of events began in December 1980, when 19-year-old Thomas Kinser was found dead in Centre County, Pennsylvania.

Investigators at the time identified Subramanyam Vedam, a young man of Indian origin living in the area, as a suspect. The case quickly turned into a criminal trial built largely on conjecture.

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In 1982, Vedam was arrested and charged with Kinser’s murder. Prosecutors alleged that he had fatally shot his friend with a .25-caliber pistol — a weapon that was never recovered.

The case against him depended primarily on circumstantial evidence, with no physical proof tying him to the killing. Despite the lack of forensic certainty, a jury convicted him in 1983, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

At the time of his conviction, Vedam was only 22 years old.

Born in India but raised in the United States since he was nine months old, he had known no life outside the country. From that moment onward, he would spend the next four decades fighting to prove his innocence.

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How Subu continued his decades-long fight for justice

For years, Vedam maintained that he was innocent of the murder. His legal appeals were repeatedly rejected, and his case gradually faded from public view. He remained in Pennsylvania’s prison system, serving a life term with little hope of release.

Everything changed in 2022, when the Pennsylvania Innocence Project — a nonprofit dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions — joined his defence team.

In the course of their review, attorneys discovered evidence that prosecutors had failed to disclose during the original trial. Among the findings were handwritten notes and an FBI report that directly contradicted the prosecution’s theory of the crime.

The new evidence suggested that the bullet wound in Kinser’s skull was too small to have been caused by a .25-caliber bullet, the type prosecutors claimed was used in the killing.

This revelation severely undermined the state’s case, indicating that the conviction had been based on flawed forensic assumptions and incomplete disclosure.

The discovery led to renewed hearings in the Centre County Court of Common Pleas. In August this year, Judge Jonathan Grine ruled that the failure to turn over this evidence constituted a violation of Vedam’s constitutional right to due process.

“Had that evidence been available at the time,” Grine wrote in his order, “there would have been a reasonable probability that the jury’s judgment would have been affected.”

The ruling effectively vacated Vedam’s conviction after more than four decades.

One month later, Centre County District Attorney Bernie Cantorna formally withdrew all charges, acknowledging that the passage of time, the loss of witnesses, and the suppressed evidence made a retrial “impossible and unjust.”

With that decision, Vedam became the longest-serving exoneree in Pennsylvania’s history and one of the longest wrongfully imprisoned individuals in the United States.

How Subu was detained… again

The day of Vedam’s expected release — October 3, 2025 — was meant to mark the end of a lifelong ordeal.

His family, friends, and supporters had gathered to celebrate outside Huntingdon State Correctional Institution, where he had spent most of his adult life. Instead, the moment turned devastating.

As Vedam walked out of the prison gates, officers from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were waiting for him.

They detained him immediately and transferred him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a federal immigration facility in central Pennsylvania.

His family issued a statement expressing heartbreak, “To our disappointment, Subu was transferred to ICE custody and is currently being held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center.”

They explained that this new legal struggle stems from an old deportation order issued decades earlier.

“This immigration issue is a remnant of Subu’s original case. Since that wrongful conviction has now been officially vacated and all charges against Subu have been dismissed, we have asked the immigration court to reopen the case and consider the fact that Subu has been exonerated. Our family continues to wait — and long for the day we can finally be together with him again.”

For the family, Vedam’s transition from wrongful imprisonment to federal detention has felt like a continuation of the same injustice.

Why Subu was detained again by ICE

The deportation order now cited by ICE dates back to the 1980s, when Vedam was still in his early twenties.

Before his arrest for murder, he had pleaded guilty at age 19 to a nonviolent drug charge — intent to distribute LSD — a decision his family says reflected a youthful error. That conviction, under US immigration law, made him technically deportable because he was not a naturalised citizen.

However, because Vedam was serving a life sentence at the time, deportation proceedings never took place. For more than four decades, the order remained inactive, effectively frozen by his incarceration.

Now, following his exoneration, ICE has revived it.

In a statement provided to the Miami Herald, the agency explained its decision, “Pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act, individuals who have exhausted all avenues of immigration relief and possess standing removal orders are priorities for enforcement. ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations) notes that Mr. Vedam, a career criminal with a rap sheet dating back to 1980, is also a convicted controlled substance trafficker. Mr. Vedam will be held in ICE custody while the agency arranges for his removal in accordance with all applicable laws and due-process requirements.”

Vedam’s legal team rejects that portrayal. His attorney, Ava Benach, has argued that without the wrongful murder conviction, the immigration case would have been resolved long ago.

The defence has filed a motion to reopen the old immigration proceedings and a petition for a stay of deportation. The government has until October 24 to respond to these filings.

How Subu’s family are coping

The abrupt re-detention left Vedam’s family in disbelief. “They’re emotionally reeling from the fact that he could be sent to a country he doesn’t know,” said family spokesperson Mike Truppa.

“There’s some ancestry in India where he might have some nominal relations, but his entire family — all of his family relationships — are here and in Canada.”

Vedam was born in India but came to the United States as an infant. He has spent his entire life in North America and has never returned to the country of his birth. His niece, Zoë Miller Vedam, described the deportation threat as profoundly unfair.

“India, in many ways, is a completely different world to him,” she told Miami Herald.

“He left India when he was nine months old. None of us can remember our lives at nine months old. He hasn’t been there for over 44 years, and the people he knew when he went as a child have passed away. His whole family — his sister, his nieces, his grand-nieces — we’re all U.S. citizens, and we all live here.”

Zoë added that the wrongful conviction had already taken an irreplaceable toll on his life. “He’s never been able to work outside the prison system,” she said.

“He’s never seen a modern film, he’s never been on the internet, he doesn’t know technology. To send him to India at 64, on his own and away from his family and community, would be just extending the harm of his wrongful incarceration.”

How Subu built a life behind bars

Despite the injustice of his conviction, those who know Vedam describe him as a person who used his time in prison to educate and help others. Over four decades, he built a reputation as a teacher, mentor, and advocate for fellow inmates.

“He really did so much over those years to show the person that he is,” said Zoë.

“He worked as a teacher, helping many, many people get their degrees — people who’ve spoken to us afterwards about how having him support them while they were incarcerated really changed their lives. He completed multiple degrees himself. He was always learning and caring.”

Inside the prison, Vedam became known for running literacy programmes and helping hundreds of inmates prepare for high school equivalency exams.

He also spearheaded fundraising efforts for community programs such as Big Brothers Big Sisters and became the first person in the facility’s 150-year history to earn a master’s degree, completing it via correspondence with a perfect 4.0 GPA.

His sister, Saraswathi Vedam, described him as someone who turned extraordinary hardship into service. “Subu’s true character is evidenced in the way he spent his 43 years of imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit,” she said in a statement.

“Rather than succumb to this dreadful hardship and mourn his terrible fate, he turned his wrongful imprisonment into a vehicle of service to others.”

What next for Subu

Because Vedam was never naturalised as a U.S. citizen, his old drug conviction makes him legally removable. The wrongful murder conviction, which kept him imprisoned for decades, effectively paused any deportation proceedings.

Now that he has been exonerated, ICE argues that it can lawfully enforce the original order.

To Vedam’s supporters and legal advocates, this interpretation ignores the broader context. They contend that after losing nearly his entire life to a wrongful conviction, he should not face exile to a country where he has no ties or support network.

His defence team has asked the immigration court to recognise his exoneration and allow him to remain with his family in the United States.

Zoë Miller Vedam summed up the family’s anguish.

“After 43 years of having his life taken from him because of a wrongful conviction, to send him to the other side of the world — to a place he doesn’t know, away from everyone who loves him — would just compound that injustice. We’re going to keep supporting him and doing everything we can to make sure that, now that he’s finally been exonerated, he’ll be able to be home with his family.”

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With inputs from agencies