Cleared sex case Britons released

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Two Britons jailed in India for sexually abusing boys at a children's shelter have been released after being cleared on appeal.

Charity worker Duncan Grant and retired naval officer Allan Waters were acquitted at the High Court in Mumbai last week, due to lack of evidence.

In 2006 a lower court jailed the pair for six years and fined them £20,000.

Campaigning group Fair Trials Abroad said the appeal verdict meant the men had been "rightfully acquitted".

William D'souza, an Indian citizen who managed the shelter and was convicted of aiding and abetting the men, was also cleared by the judges.

Charity worker

The police investigation began after a 15-year-old boy complained about repeated sexual and physical abuse by the men. Four other boys made similar complaints.

A 2001 police report charged the men with sodomy, and sexually abusing boys at the Anchorage shelter which Mr Grant, a charity worker from Hampstead in north London, had set up in 1995.

Mr Waters, 60, of Porchester, Hampshire, who police claimed was a regular visitor to the home, was arrested at New York's JFK airport in 2003 on an Interpol warrant and extradited to India.

Mr D'souza was sentenced to three years in jail in 2006 after the court heard allegations that he beat boys in the shelter to prevent them from complaining to other social workers or the police.

'Flawed' trial

But Fair Trials Abroad, which worked to secure the men's release for the past two years, said the original trial was flawed.

Fair Trials spokeswomen Sabine Zanker said they believed the accusations against the men were motivated by revenge, and that witnesses were paid.

"We also had testimony from UK gap year students who stayed at the home who said it was one big room, and nothing could have happened."

Those campaigning for the men's release believe that a known paedophile in Bombay paid boys to make allegations of abuse against Mr Grant after he demanded the man stop coming to the shelter.

Ms Zanker said Mr Grant had done an enormous amount of good work for the street children of Bombay, helping them into education and employment, much of which had been undone by the conviction.

Of the men, she said: "It has been five long years and they are hoping that they can return to the UK soon."

The men's lawyer Tariq Sayed said: "My clients were falsely implicated in the case."