Labour peer Lord Ashley of Stoke has urged the government to intervene in the case of a British man currently jailed in India .

Ian Stillman was sentenced to ten years in prison after being charged with possession of 20kg of cannabis. Neither his trial or his appeal accepted that he is deaf.

He had been in India since 1978, where he established the Nambikkai Foundation for deaf people, providing training and employment.

Stillman is supported by Fair Trials Abroad and shadow international secretary Caroline Spelman, who travelled to India last month to speak to the Indian government on his behalf.

Lord Ashley, president of the RNID, plans to write to foreign secretary Jack Straw about the case.

"If he was totally deaf and relying upon lip-reading, which is a very, very inadequate means of communication - and as the original trial was in a foreign language - that meant he was excluded from his own trial," Lord Ashley told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

"I can't see that justice is served by that decision."