Like thousands of Nepalis, Chandra Kumar Rai, now 32, was jobless and yearned for a better life. He sold his ancestral property, and paid Rs 75,000 to a foreign employment agency in Kathmandu to take him to South Korea via Thailand.

That was seven years ago. The agent dumped him in Bangkok. Chandra says he was framed by people he was staying With and tell into a drug dragnet by the Thai police. He ended up with a life sentence at the infamous Bangkwang Central Prison. The police who arrested him say they found drugs in the room he was living in, and used this as "evidence" to prove that Chandra was going to deliver it abroad. The Thai pro bono lawyer. Munmine Dutanajaru. is representing Chandra. The judge who sentenced Chandra did so just because he had slept in a room that contained drugs. One Thai justice department official admitted that foreigners often get treated unfairly because of language problems and ignorance about their rights.

Since then, activists who have visited say Chandra and other Asian inmates who cannot afford to pay the guards at the jail have been beaten, mistreated and their appeals for repatriation to Nepal have gone unheeded. The Nepal government itself seems bent on making an example of people like Chandra to dissuade others.

Jivan Thapa was 22 when he was incarcerated at Bangkwang seven years ago. As the eldest son in a large family, Jivan\'s family had paid what was for it a huge sum of money to send him to Japan. Like Chandra, Jivan got picked up by Thai police in Bangkok and a drug offence was slapped on him. Both Jivan and Chandra say they were forced to sign a confession statement about drug trafficking and say they have not been allowed communication with families in Udaypur and Dharan.

Jivan is deaf in one ear,and says it is result of beatings at the beginning of his jail sentence. He too had travelled to Thailand en route to Japan, but was dumped by his agents. Last week, a Nepali Embassy official went to see Chandra in the presence of a Thai journalist. In what seems to be a move to teach him a lesson, activists say Chandra was transferred from Building -2 to -6. which has much harsher conditions. Jail authorities have taken a dim view of journalists snooping around on behalf of foreign inmates trying to lobby for their release.

In an appeal to the President of the Supreme Court in Thailand, Chandra asked that his case be re-opened, claiming that his arrest was prompted by "greed, corruption and inept attitude" of the police. Activists say the two were apprehended during a period of high graft and mandatory drug-bust quotas. A recent investigative documentary team from the BBC uncovered widespread extortion, beatings, corruption and overcrowding in Bangkwang after the Thai authorities responded to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and cracked down on trafficking.

Volunteers from the charity, Prisoners Abroad, visited Bankwang and met Jivan and Chandra recently. They were amazed at their determination to survive, to return home to Nepal, and to make something of their lives. Both have learnt to write and speak English fluently and have found ingenious ways to communicate with the outside world.

X rites one recent visitor: \'"For starters, I can hardly envision less likely partners in crime than Jivan and Chandra. they are not given the food and facilities provided to American or European prisoners, and they don\'t get help from their embassies."

Western and Japanese prisoners get S84 a month from their embassies to make the lives of their nationals at Bankwang bearable. I he Royal Nepal Embassy does not have the budget for this, besides there are 40 other prisoners besides Jivan and Chandra in Bangkok jails, while 25 other cases involving Nepalis are pending. Among them, a few-have already served 18 years in Bangkok jails.

"We do not have the concrete evidence but there are reports that some of the Nepali convicts in Thai jails are innocent of the crimes they have been convicted of," Nepal\'s ambassador to Thailand, Janak Bahadur Singh, told us in a telephone interview.

The case of Chandra and Jivan came to light after British activists who had been campaigning for the release of a British girl also serving in Bankwang was let out two years ago. The activists found that non-Western inmates lived in much worse conditions, and had been more or less abandoned by their home countries.

They have taken up the cause of Chandra and Jivan, and have written to the Foreign "Ministry and the Prime Minister\'s Office in Kathmandu, the Nepali embassy in Bangkok and to Nepali human rights organisations like INSEC. Says campaigner Sue Ridley: "These two lads are caring and kind, they remain sane despite beatings and the mistreatment. 1 hey have had no communication from families in Nepal for seven years, they have very little food and no visitors. I think it is time someone made it possible for them to return home."

After he was duped by the employment agency, but before he was arrested in 1993, Chandra says he had approached the Embassy in Bangkok to help him return to Nepal. But there was no help, and no hope.

For some years now, Thai authorities have been trying to work out an arrangement with the Foreign Ministry in Kathmandu to send back Nepali detainees in Thai jails. A draft proposal laying out the framework of a possible repatriation agreement was sent to Kathmandu. Cyan Chandra Acharya at the Foreign Ministry says Nepal is considering the repatriation proposal allowing the Nepali inmates to complete their sentence in Nepal. "We are talking to other concerned Ministries on how we should respond to the Thai proposal, Acharya told us.

But the ministries don\'t seem to see the urgency of the problem and appear reluctant to formulate any new laws to allow repatriation. In 1997, the Nepal Police drafted a Mutual Assistance Act, which might have made possible international treaties to transfer Nepali convicts to home jails. The proposed Act is pending in the Law and Justice Ministry. Attorney General Badri Bahadur Karki told us this law is crucial: "Without the act coming into force, the transfer of Nepali convicts to home jails will be difficult."

Chandra and Jivan may be innocent, but according to sources at the Narcotic Drug Control Law Enforcement Unit in Kathmandu, 284 Nepali nationals, including 13 women, were arrested in various countries on charges of narcotic trafficking in the first four months of this year. This is already half the number arrested in the whole of 1999. The highest number of such arrests are in Thailand. The Unit identifies Thailand as the prime destination for narcotic traffickers who use Nepal as a transshipment point for Afghan heroin.

A police officer with the Narcotic Drug Control Law-Enforcement Unit dismisses the chances of Nepalis in Thailand being wrongly convicted. "They might have been forced by poverty to take the risks, but it is not likely that they were framed," he told us.

Meanwhile, back in Bangkwang Chandra and Jivan are beginning their eighth year in jail. If nothing is done, they will be there till they die. American prisoners who share cells with the Nepalis have had their life sentences reduced from life to 40, and then 20 years. Due to a Thai-US treaty, they can serve four years for lesser crimes and eight years for major crimes and then be transferred back to the United States before being paroled.

There is no such hope for the Nepalis in Bangkwang. A Bangkok-based journalist recently visited Chandra and Jivan and spoke with them for two hours. His conclusion: "These two young men are innocent, they are no threat to society whatsoever and should not be held in such inhumane conditions. They need the help of their country, their neglect has gone on for too long now."