A Co Kilkenny woman living in England is campaigning to secure the release of her son from a prison in India where she claims he has been wrongfully jailed.
Teresa Malluzzo (nee Grace) is hoping the Taoiseach will make representations to British prime minister Gordon Brown to ask the Indian High Commission in London to intervene.
Patrick Malluzzo (30) was arrested while on a backpacking holiday in 2004 and convicted last summer of conspiracy to smuggle 19kg (42lb) of cannabis. He received a 10-year jail sentence and is being held at the Central Jail in Kota, a city in Rajasthan.
Ms Malluzzo's extended family in Kilkenny (from where she emigrated in 1966), led by her sister Ann Stuart, have launched a public campaign and gathered thousands of signatures calling for "Justice for Patrick".
Kilkenny-based Fianna Fáil TD and Minister of State John McGuinness will present a copy of the petition to Bertie Ahern "within the next few days".
Mr McGuinness said yesterday he was also trying to arrange a meeting for the family with the Indian ambassador to Ireland.
Speaking by telephone from her home at Dartford in Kent, Ms Malluzzo (60) claimed her son was innocent and only confessed to the charge after being physically mistreated.
She described him as "a "strapping 6ft 4in" but said "his health has deteriorated after three years in custody and he is on anti-depressants". She said she "couldn't cope" with going out to India to see her son, but her Sicilian-born husband, Salvatore, who has visited him in jail on a number of occasions, was "shocked" by the conditions, which are "very difficult".
Ms Malluzzo said she had lobbied her MP and written to both Tony Blair and Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor. The family had collected "thousands of signatures" from members of the public which she hoped to present to 10 Downing Street. She added that British consular officials in India were visiting her son "every four to six months".
While travelling through India, Mr Malluzzo apparently met another British backpacker in New Delhi. Both men's luggage was placed on a train to Mumbai which, through misadventure, neither man boarded. The railway police were alerted to the unattended bags and discovered 35 packets of cannabis in one of the bags which, Ms Malluzzo said, did not belong to her son.
She said the other man had also been arrested and his trial was currently under way in India.
