He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. ICE snatched him up the moment he won his freedom.

Subramanyam "Subu" Vedam has lived in the US since he was nine months old

We’ll start with the murder.

Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam was a teenager in college when his roommate, Thomas Kinser, 19, disappeared.

Nine months later, two hikers found a body in Bear Meadows, below Tussey Mountain. The police quickly ruled out suicide and identified the body as Thomas Kinser. He had been shot, they said, by a a .25 caliber pistol in the back of the head.

Another nine months later, the police charged Subu with murder. The authorities took him into custody. He was deemed a flight risk and imprisoned without bail to wait for his murder trial.

Thomas’s father said that Thomas had given Subu a ride into town in exchange for some LSD, and that his son had never returned from that trip.

One witness said that Subu had been forced to live with Thomas longer than he wanted and that he had a gun… though under cross examination the same witness said he’d been “coerced by the police in such a way that he didn’t know whether he was telling the truth.”

A second witness said he had sold Subu a gun — a .25 caliber pistol — but on cross examination said that he had originally told the police he HADN’T sold Subu a gun… until the cops threatened to prosecute him.

The defense also pointed out that the dead man they had found had a perfectly formed right hand, while Thomas had two deformed fingers. Also, the corpse had one leg much shorter than the other, and Thomas never had a limp or corrective shoes.

There was a lot of circumstantial evidence, and Subu did have a drug charge on him: he’d been caught with LSD. Hardly a surprise for a college student in the 1980s, but still.

On February 8th, 1983, Subu was convicted of murdering his roommate and given a life sentence with no possibility of parole.

Throughout the process, Subu maintained his innocence. In fact, he refused several plea deals, insisting that he would be exonerated.

Prison was Subu’s new life, though, and he turned his attention toward making the best of it. He received multiple degrees during his time at Huntington State Correctional Institute.

Subu is, in fact, the first prisoner in the history of Pennsylvania to get a master’s degree while incarcerated.

He raised money from behind bars for the Boys and Girls Clubs via Runathons. He tutored other inmates who were trying to get their high school diplomas… hundreds of inmates over the years got help from Subu. He’s a founding board member of the Literacy Council, one of the first inmate-led literacy programs in the nation. He helped secure over $20k in grant money for the program.

So, good for Subu, he created a life of service to his community despite his incarceration, but the fact is that he was still a convicted murderer. Justice had been done.

Or maybe not.

In 2023, lawyers working together with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project discovered some surprising facts:

1. A witness for the prosecution in Subu’s case had committed perjury.
2. The prosecution had hidden TWENTY-NINE interviews with other witnesses and potential suspects from the defense.
3. The prosecution had hidden FBI reports that found the bullet in the victim’s body WAS NOT a .25 caliber bullet.

In other words, if the prosecution had played it straight, Subu could not have been convicted for the crime. They had a lying witness, hidden interviews, and a bullet that couldn’t be connected to Subu.

When all of this was presented in court, it was agreed that not only had Subu been wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted, but that to try to recreate a new trial for him would be not only unjust but impossible.

The county District Attorney withdrew all charges against Subu, publicly announcing Subu’s innocence on October 2nd, 2025, eleven days ago, forty-three years after he was wrongfully imprisoned.

Subu, now 64 years old, has spent nearly his entire adult life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

His family — including younger members of the family who have only ever met him during his incarceration — eagerly awaited his release.

But there was a wrinkle.

Remember waaaaay back in the ‘80s when Subu was a teenager and he got caught with LSD?

Well ICE remembers.

When Subu pleaded guilty to the LSD charge as a teen, it opened him up to deportation. ICE is calling it a “legacy” deportation order.

And now that the murder conviction is out of the way, the Department of Homeland Security — an organization that didn’t even exist in the 80s — can use that decades old conviction to deport Subu. And they have every intention of doing so.

In fact, as Subu prepared to walk out of the prison where he had been wrongfully incarcerated for four decades, ICE requested a transfer of custody on October 3rd, the day after the DA withdrew all charges.

So instead of walking out the prison doors to his waiting family, Subu was whisked off to Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a private prison owned and run by the GEO group.

(Like many for-profit prisons, Moshannon Valley Processing Center is a facility that has often been accused of abusing the people held there — many of whom are not criminals, have no criminal record, and are being held in anticipation of their immigration hearings. Moshannon in particular has been accused of denying access to medical care and misusing and abusing solitary confinement, which is not a huge surprise given that ICE has put people in solitary at least FOURTEEN THOUSAND times in the last five years. A study last year found that not only did ICE abuse solitary confinement as a tool, but that they often held people in solitary so long that it violated the UN standard for torture.)

So what’s to become of Subu?

The government’s intention is to deport him to India, a country he left when he was nine months old. His entire family lives in the States.

Subu’s lawyers are attempting to reopen the immigration case — which is tied to the LSD chage and connected to the now vacated murder case — and have requested a stay of deportation while that motion is pending. The government has to respond by October 24th.

Is this justice? Is this right? Does this make any sense at all?

His niece, Zoë, doesn’t think so. “He’s never been able to work outside the prison system. 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.”

Subu was arrested and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. The prosecution hid information that would have freed him. He spent four decades in prison as a result. Now the US government is planning to deport this 64 year old man for a drug charge in his teens.

What a tragedy. What an injustice. What a horrible reflection of our country, our culture, and our government.

This is the United States of America. Don’t close your eyes.

SOURCES

Subu’s story in the Miami Herald. At the Times of India. Local radio station WPSU.

A timeline of the murder trial.

The for-profit prison used by ICE, the Moshannon Valley Processing Center.

ICE and solitary confinement, including the 14k uses over five years and the violation of UN torture standards.

The “Free Subu” website.

The PA Innocence Project.