ARRESTED for killing his father late one night in 1958, P.P. James, a Sri Lankan, was ruled mentally ill by a judge, sent to an asylum for the criminally insane — and forgotten.

James never stood trial, never even had a bail hearing, yet he spent 50 years of his life a prisoner.

James has become a hero on the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka, and his ordeal a source of deep embarrassment over the bureaucratic tangles it has revealed.

While President Mahinda Rajapaksa gave him US$5,000 to make up for his troubles, a psychiatrist at the asylum where James was held says others are trapped in the same legal limbo.

Longing for some of his lost years, James wishes he had been convicted of murdering his father. At least then, he would have been freed after only 15 or 20 years in prison.

But a conviction would have been unlikely.

His father was still alive.

As a child in Hipauwa, a village 88 km east of Colombo, James seemed destined for a blessed life. His grandfather was the local government representative, giving him far greater wealth, power and land than his neighbors.

An errant coconut changed all that when he was 12.

He says the falling fruit hit his head so hard that his nose bled for a week. It hurt to speak, he was plagued by headaches and became forgetful.

He began acting erratically and would disappear for months at a time. At 18 he lost his beloved grandfather. The death plunged him into despair. His relatives came to think of him as a madman.

James’ mother ran away when he was a child, and his father was a notorious drinker and moonshiner who, after remarrying, shunned his old family.

One night in 1958, James, 34, walked past his father’s house and thought he saw blood on the grass. He says he looked up and saw a man, presumably a customer of his father’s coconut and honey liquor, flashing a knife.

Fearing his father had been stabbed, he ran to the nearest home and alerted the police, but the officers did not find any blood.

The officers beat James and arrested him. The details of what happened next are lost to hazy memories and the mists of time. James’ father really had been stabbed by an unknown assailant, but police accused James of doing it and didn’t wait to see if anyone had actually died.

Before James could even be charged, a judge ruled him mentally ill and sent him for treatment. He was trapped in the system. Hospital officials said they needed the prisons authority to collect him, the prisons authority said it needed a request from the court. The court appeared to have lost his case file.

(SD-Agencies)