TOKYO: A Nepalese who spent 15 “horrible and torturous” years in a Japanese jail for a murder he did not commit was formally acquitted yesterday after a retrial.
Govinda Prasad Mainali, 46, was declared not guilty by the Tokyo High Court at a short hearing, even though he had been deported to Nepal weeks ago after his conviction was quashed. The same court had in 2000 found him guilty of killing a 39-year-old woman and sentenced him to life in prison, overturning a lower court’s not-guilty verdict.
The Supreme Court upheld Mainali’s life sentence in 2003.
Mainali told reporters in Kathmandu that yesterday’s pronouncement was something for which he had been waiting a long time. “To see this day, I have spent 15 years of my life inside the four walls, resorting to quiet communication with myself,” he said.
“I have prayed to God and asked: what mistake have I committed? God was the only witness of my pleas.”
Police in 1997 arrested Mainali, who knew the victim and lived near the Tokyo apartment where her strangled body was found. Mainali, who had always maintained his innocence, officially asked Japan’s slow-moving justice system for a retrial in 2005. It was granted only this year.Fresh DNA evidence, also tested only this year, proved the original probe had overlooked the fact that semen found inside the woman was not Mainali’s.
DNA samples collected from her nails as well as body hair found in the room were a match with the semen, further supporting Mainali’s claim that he was not the killer, according to local media.
“I was forced to undergo 15 years of horrible and torturous time in jail despite being innocent,” he said. “Had the DNA test not been conducted, I would have been languishing in jail and probably would have died there.”
Nepalese acquitted after fifteen years in Japan jail
