G.S. Patel, J.

1. On 1st May 1996, Prem Kishore Raj (“Raj”), the Petitioner, arrived at the Sir Seewosagar Ramgoolam International Airport in the Republic of Mauritius on a flight from India. Twenty-one years old at the time, Raj was a young film actor and, he claims, had travelled to Mauritius for the shooting of a film. This was his first trip overseas.

2. When he disembarked, Raj was carrying a leather briefcase. A senior Customs Officer, one Mr. Caullychurn, noticed him and, at the customs inspection counter, remarked that the briefcase seemed abnormal. The Customs and Drug Unit carried out a search. When Caullychurn pierced the leather lining of Raj’s briefcase with a pen, he noticed a brown substance on the pen’s tip. He tore open the leather lining. There was plywood beneath. Removing this, he saw two rectangular plastic parcels. To a question from the Assistant Superintendent of Police present, Raj said he could not account for the presence of these parcels. The Chief Forensic Science Officer examined them. They were found to be 371.3 grams of heroin.

3. Later that day, Raj was taken to Villa Pointe aux Biches where, or so he is supposed to have said, a contact person was to meet him. That person did telephone but did not show up. The police claimed that this was probably because, by that time, the press had already given some considerable publicity to the case. Raj received several phone calls from India. One of these was from a person named Hassan. Raj gave six statements to the police. In the first five, he explained that he was in Mauritius for the shooting of a film, that he had used his own money to pay for the trip, borrowed the rest from his mother and aunt, and had about $700 in travellers’ cheques. His travel arrangements had been made by his friends, of whom Hassan was one. The sixth statement was the one in which Raj is supposed to have confessed that, with his knowledge, Hassan had concealed the drugs in his briefcase so that Raj could make some extra money. Raj was to deliver the briefcase to Hassan’s friend at Villa Pointe aux Biches and, in return, Raj would be paid Rs.50,000 on his return to India so that he could invest this in his new venture, a television serial. The police claimed that he also said he had not mentioned this in his previous five statements as he feared that Hassan might harm his family in India. He pleaded for clemency, saying he had never been involved in any such dealings before.

4. A year and a half later, on 18th December 1997, Raj was convicted by Assizes Court, a bench of the Supreme Court of Mauritius. That court found him to be a drug trafficker. He was sentenced to penal servitude for life. Raj claims he was unrepresented by his lawyer at the time the order was pronounced. He invoked his right to appeal and therefore, pending appeal, was remanded to jail. Raj says he was not provided a lawyer. He was given no legal aid. Nothing came of his appeal. He continued to remain incarcerated. At that time, under the Mauritian Dangerous Drugs Act, 1986 read with the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1985, a life sentence meant imprisonment for 30 years.

5. On 24th October 2005, the Republics of India and Mauritius entered into an agreement for the transfer of sentenced prisoners inter-se, each country agreeing to facilitate the transfer of sentenced prisoners from one to the other. That agreement also contained a provision for reconciling statutory incompatibilities in sentencing. Article 8 of the Agreement said if the nature or duration, or both, of a sentence passed in the transferring State was incompatible with the law of the receiving State, then the receiving state, though bound by the legal language and details of the sentence delivered in the transferring state, could adapt that sentence to bring into conformity with its own domestic law. That Article entrusts the receiving State with the responsibility of harmonizing domestic law and the sentence handed down by the tran