After years of pleading for his freedom, British gunrunner Peter Bleach was released Wednesday from an Indian jail where he had been serving a life sentence for air-dropping arms to militants.
Scores of reporters and photographers watched as Bleach walked free from Alipur jail in the eastern city of Calcutta and was then whisked away by car to the offices of the British Deputy High Commission.
Jail workers crowded the prison terrace to see him being taken away.
Police had cordoned off the area and all traffic was suspended on the road for about 10 minutes during the release.
"Peter Bleach is now a free man," Paul Walsh, spokesman for the British Deputy High Commission, told reporters.
The 51-year-old Briton was serving a life term after he and five men from the former Soviet Union were convicted in 2000 of waging war against India after dropping crates of assault rifles and anti-tank missiles to militants in West Bengal in 1995.
The others who were convicted were freed in 2000 after appeals by Moscow.
"We got clearance from the Indian home ministry this morning. No case is pending against him now. He is now a free man," said Joydev Chakraborty, inspector general of West Bengal prisons.
Bleach had appealed to the Calcutta High Court in September 2002, saying he was being discriminated against because he was a Briton and the five Latvians were released from jail on the grounds of their Russian citizenship.
His legal representatives had fought a long battle for the Briton's freedom, even petitioning the Indian president to grant clemency.
The identity of the rebel group which received the arms drop has never been made public. But the area where it occurred is rife with insurgent groups battling for secession or greater autonomy.
The alleged mastermind of the arms drop, Danish national Niels Christien Nielson, also known as Kim Davy, from Copenhagen, is still at large.