schapelle corby, page-177

Guilty or not, I wouldnt like to be in Corby's predictament. Has anyone read the book Shantaram - one of the best I've read. The author also found himself in an Indian Jail. And remember the movie 'Midnight Express'.

This story is another - not about drugs or Corby but about an experience in an Indian Jail.

SMH 22 June 2008

A BATTLE-HARDENED soldier and security adviser said he was kept for 24 days like a caged animal in a crowded, rat-infested jail crammed with murderers.

Former SAS corporal Paul Jordan suffered his ordeal in India after accidentally straying a few metres over the border from Nepal.

He has put hundreds of journalists, businessmen and government officials through rigorous courses on how to survive in hostile environments and war zones.

Back in Sydney yesterday, he admitted he broke his own cardinal rule of always being aware of exactly where you are and what is going on around you when a rickshaw he was in strayed from Nepal into India.

"Suddenly this border official screamed at me and told me I had committed a terrible crime. It turned out the rickshaw had carried me about two metres across the border," Mr Jordan said.

Mr Jordan had been hired by the International Federation of Journalists to instruct Nepalese journalists how to stay safe in riots and confrontations, and first aid.

For a break, they rode on rickshaws out of the southern Nepalese town of Biratnagar, but strayed over the border at Jogbani Crossing.

Mr Jordan said: "There was no barrier, no border police, no marks on the road. Nepalese and Indians wander back and forth over the border all the time so you could not tell where it was."

Officials assured Mr Jordan it was a silly mistake and only needed a bit of paperwork.

But his case got caught up in legal bureaucracy. He was charged with entering the country illegally.

He faced months in jail but was released after pressure from the Australian Government.

He was detained in a tiny cell next to a stinking, crammed prison yard that held 580 people. "The cell was for my protection. I was like a caged animal with hundreds of prisoners trying to get to me. It was wet, rats everywhere, and one prisoner who had killed seven people kept approaching me through the bars of the cell. I wouldn't have anything to do with him," Mr Jordan said.

After two weeks in this hellhole he fell ill and was moved to the prison hospital. A local court official kindly supplied food and water.

Mr Jordan said: "I had called people in Australia and they were pressing the Government to help me. I'm lucky in that I know who to call and get help. If I was a backpacker I'd be in a terrible position.

"The lesson from this is to let people know exactly where you are going, call someone at set times, have emergency numbers ready and have people put pressure on the Government to help."