Deportation of Indian-origin man wrongly jailed for 43 years stayed by US court

In a dramatic legal twist, two US courts have temporarily stayed the deportation of Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam, a 64-year-old Indian-origin man who spent over four decades in prison for a murder he did not commit.

Mr Vedam, who was exonerated in October 2025 after new evidence cleared him of the 1983 killing of his former roommate, now faces a new legal battle—deportation to India, a country he left as an infant.

Vedam, who has lived in the United States since he was nine months old, was convicted of murder in Pennsylvania in 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. His conviction was vacated earlier this year after a reinvestigation revealed critical prosecutorial errors and withheld evidence.

However, immediately after his release, officers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took him into custody, citing an old deportation order dating back to 1988 and a prior drug conviction.

At present, he is detained at a short-term ICE facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, known for its deportation airstrip operations.

Last Thursday, two separate courts intervened in his favour:

An immigration judge stayed Vedam’s deportation pending review by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which will determine whether to reopen his 1980s drug case.

The same day, a US District Court in Pennsylvania also granted a temporary stay of removal, preventing ICE from executing deportation orders while judicial reviews continue.

These parallel rulings effectively pause his removal from the United States, although they do not yet guarantee permanent relief.

Before his wrongful murder conviction, Vedam had been charged with selling LSD and theft. In 1984, he entered a no-contest plea to four drug counts and received a 2½–5-year sentence, to run concurrently with his now-overturned life sentence.

ICE now relies on that decades-old drug case and the 1988 deportation order to justify his continued detention.