After15 years in prison, a Nepalese man is declared innocent in Tokyo
Tokyo (AsiaNews) - He has been released after spending 15 years in prison, accused of a crime that now the Tokyo High Court says was committed by someone else. The case of Govinda Prasad Mainali, 44, from Nepal (pictured: the reunion with his family) began on March 19, 1997, when in an empty apartment in Shibuya (Tokyo), a 39 year-old employee of TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) was found dead. Four days later, Prasad Mainali was arrested, on the grounds that he had the key of the victim's apartment and that the DNA of semen found in a condom left in the toilet in the apartment matched his.
Mainali has consistently denied the accusations.
In April 2000, the Tokyo District Court declared him innocent. It was not clear, it said, whether the condom was used at the time of the crime; furthermore, the strands of hair found on the victim's body belonged to someone else. But in December of that year, the Tokyo High Court once again found him guilty on the grounds that in the notebook in which the woman meticulously kept information about the men with whom she had had sexual relations, there was no reference to the condom in question. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On June 7 of this year, the Tokyo High Court decided to reopen the case as new evidence indicates that the crime was committed by someone else. Mainali was released from prison.
"I lost 15 years of my life and now I want to live well those that are left", he told his lawyer in the immigration office after being informed that the court had suspended his sentence. He was sentenced on May 20, 1997.
He was delivered to the office of immigration to be deported; waiting for him were his wife Radha, 42, and daughters Mithila, 20, and Alisha, 18, who had arrived two days prior from Nepal. Mithila, who was 2 years old the last time she saw her father, said she was "shaking with joy."
He was released from prison because he didn't commit the crime, but he is also being expelled from Japan because he has stayed beyond the period allowed by his entry visa. The Minister of Justice, Makoto Taki, said that the decision of the Supreme Court in Tokyo indicates that the investigation was inadequate. An inadequacy that cost Mainali 15 years in prison!
Magnanimity toward Japan
In a letter to his Japanese lawyer, Shunichi Katagawa, before the court's decision to release him, Mainali had written "Because I am optimistic, I believe I will (be able to) return to Nepal with Radha, Mitha and Alisha", and he concluded by saying that he felt "overwhelmed with gratitude." One should rather feel overwhelmed with admiration for his magnanimity towards the nation that made him suffer.
Nepal celebrates
The news of the release of Govinda Prasad Mainali was greeted with jubilation in Katmandu, the capital of Nepal. The major newspapers printed it on the front page.
"Found innocent after 15 years" was the headline in large letters of Kantipur, the most widely-read newspaper of Nepal, and a Japanese daily wrote that "the Nepalese citizens living in Japan are happy for the release of Mainali and express gratitude to the group of Japanese lawyers who fought tirelessly to have his innocence recognized".
It was not without severity that Anup Shakya said that it is time for the Nepalese in unison to request compensation for Mainali for the injustice he suffered over the last 15 years. An article in the Kathmandu Post, in writing about his family, didn't refrain from underlining that they were despised even by their own countrymen after the arrest and conviction of their relative.
Responding to an interview, Indra, Mainali's older brother, said: "We knew from the beginning that my brother was not the real culprit. But people wouldn't believe us. For them, a nation like Japan could never make a mistake."
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