Last week, Clinton Kalu, a native of Ndinwafor in Okigwe Local Government Area of Imo State, walked out from the Port Harcourt Maximum Prison where he had spent 27 years of his life for a crime he didn’t commit.
He was roped into a murder case in April 1992 by some undisclosed persons while trying to resolve a dispute involving his in-laws. That marked the beginning of his journey in ‘hell’.
His trial at the tribunal and later at a High Court and his eventual detention happened so fast that when he found himself in prison over an offence he did not commit, he was livid with anger but later accepted his fate.
Recalling how he was sentenced to death by hanging or firing squad, Kalu in an interview with Punch said, “Twenty-seven years ago, some people were accused of stealing generating plant and fluorescent tubes.
“They are my in-laws. After the court decided the case, we heard that somebody was murdered in the compound where my sister married. But I…