FREED charity worker Ian Stillman is planning to publish his memoirs, a year after being released from an Indian jail.

Mr Stillman, who is deaf, has been in contact with two publishers in the UK who have expressed interest in putting his life story into print.

Mr Stillman, 53, who also suffers from diabetes and has one leg, was convicted of possessing cannabis after the taxi he was travelling in, in India, was stopped and searched by police in 2000.

Despite strenuous denials, he was sentenced to a decade in prison, but was freed on health grounds after two years.

His trial was labelled the "worst miscarriage of justice I have ever seen" by Stephen Jakobi, of Fair Trials Abroad.

Mr Stillman had worked in India for 25 years, and founded a charity that provides education and training for deaf people.

Family members say that, since his release a year ago, writing his memoirs has been part of his healing process.

But Mr Stillman's parents, Roy and Monica, who live in Tadcaster Road in York, said he was still suffering from his ordeal.

His father said: "He has suffered with post-traumatic stress and depression, in common with other people who have been in prison, such as Terry Waite.

"He has periods where he goes away, stays with friends and writes. We think writing his memoirs will get the thing out of his system.

"He is communicating more now and he is taking a greater interest in his own affairs.

"By nature he is a very determined, positive person and it is totally out of character for him to lose a grip on his own life, but this was the effect upon him of this incarceration."

Mr Stillman is now living in Romsey, Hampshire, near his sister, Elspeth, with his wife, Sue, and their two children, Anita and Lennie.

Sue has just returned from six months in India, where she is co-ordinating the charity work.