WASHINGTON: A US court has sentenced IIT alumnus Vikram Buddhi to 57 months in jail after finding him guilty of posting threatening messages on the Internet against former President George W Bush and the US infrastructure.
A PhD student of Purdue University, a 38-year-old Buddhi, has been in prison since April 2006.
A jury convicted him in June 2007 of making threats on a Yahoo Finance Message Board against Bush, the then Vice President Dick Cheney and their wives, besides calling for the bombing of US infrastructure.
Thirty months after the conviction, US District Judge James T Moody on Friday sentenced Buddhi in Hammond, Indiana. Besides the 57 months in jail, he pronounced a ‘supervised release’ of three years for Buddhi under the supervision of a probation officer.
Having been in prison for nearly 44 months now, the period already served is expected to be deducted from the sentence. Buddhi termed the sentence ‘a grave miscarriage of justice’ and said he would be filing an appeal against it. Reacting to the verdict, he said he was not the kind of person that the US Government was portraying him to be, commenting: “I got the short end of the stick in this case.” A day before the pronouncement of the sentence, Buddhi told the judge he would ‘involuntarily represent himself ’ after getting rid of his court-appointed Attorney Arlington Foley as he was dissatisfied with the assistance provided by the lawyer.
Foley, in comments to the Indian media, said he would file the notice for appeal on behalf of Buddhi within the 10-day window available for the purpose, leaving the rest to Buddhi and another lawyer who may be named to pursue the matter.
“Every person has a right to appeal. The court has asked me to ensure that (the notice of appeal) is filed,” said Foley, without going into Buddhi’s complaint against him.
Buddhi will appeal: family
Buddhi will appeal the sentence, said his family who alleged that the trial was without a valid charge, PTI adds from Mumbai.
Buddhi’s father Subba Rao said he will appeal the ruling and that the essential point was the arbitrary way in which the prosecution began during the Bush regime and continued during Barack Obama’s presidency. The charges do not even have a whisper of Internet messages, he said.
Buddhi was on Saturday sentenced to four years and nine months in prison and an additional three years of supervised release by a US court for posting hate messages in 2006 against Bush and calling for bombing of American infrastructure.
The 38-year-old PhD student at Purdue University was arrested in 2006 for allegedly threatening Bush, Dick Cheney and their wives.
The whole thing is fishy but I do not know what is really happening, said Rao.