British gunrunner 'has tuberculosis'

Peter Bleach says he has severe chest pains

A British smuggler serving a life sentence in India for gunrunning says he is suffering from tuberculosis.

Peter Bleach, who has been held in Calcutta's Presidency jail for six years, says he is regularly spitting blood and has acute chest pains.

The former military intelligence officer, jailed for his part in dropping a huge arms consignment into West Bengal, has previously filed court petitions demanding immediate release.

Mr Bleach, from North Yorkshire, says five Russian pilots convicted for the same crime were freed more than a year ago.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair believes he has a valid point in requesting the same treatment as the pilots and during a recent visit asked the Indian government to release Bleach.

No x-ray

Bleach, who was arrested at Bombay airport in December 1995, said that the consulting physician of the British Deputy High Commission in Calcutta had told him to start treatment for tuberculosis.

The jail authorities did not comment on the claims, but the warden in charge of Bleach's quarters admitted that a chest x-ray had not been done.

He said the x-ray machine in the jail hospital was out of order.

Bleach says other medical tests, including analysis of his sputum, proved he had tuberculosis.

Bleach has spent more than six years in jail

The smuggler was convicted for dropping weapons from a transport aircraft over the Purulia region on the night of 17 December, 1995.

But Bleach claims he had told British police and intelligence about the conspiracy and had been asked to go along with the plotters.

He was arrested with the pilots when the plane passed through Indian airspace and was forced to land at Bombay airport four days later.

The alleged mastermind, Jan Christien Nielsen alias Kim Davy, disappeared from Bombay Airport under mysterious circumstances.