Teresa Malluzzo and her Sicilian husband Salvatore have been forced to put their house on the market to pay their mounting legal and travel bills.

Patrick Malluzzo (30) went on a backpacking holiday to Asia in October 2003 but was arrested three months later at Bombay airport on cannabis trafficking charges.

He was on his way to propose to his then girlfriend in Thailand before returning to his home in England where he planned to join the Irish Guards in the British army.

Malluzzo was not in possession of the bag that contained 19kg of cannabis and says it held only dirty laundry and some identification when he gave it to a travelling companion who then left the luggage on board a train.

"How can he be charged with trafficking when he didn't even have the bag? And if he was really smuggling drugs, why would he put identification in the bag so that police could find him?" his mother asks.

Malluzzo has spent over three-and-a-half years in the Kota jail in a remote desert region of Rajasthan and writes to his family on a weekly basis. He is the only Westerner in the prison and shares a cell with 54 other men. His mother is concerned that her son's letters are sounding more and more hopeless and fears his depression over his plight is worsening.

"There are swarms everywhere. One minute it's cockroaches, then it's fly ants. The mosquitoes are here all the time. But most of all, I hate the flies. The toilet here is open and when I'm eating, the flies are everywhere. God, I can't stand it much longer. . . .God, I just wish I could talk to you and Dad, " his mother reads from one of his most recent letters.

In another letter, Malluzzo tells his parents how he came to confess after he says he was beaten and threatened for two weeks. "I was interrogated about terrorism, firearms and spying, all of which are totally untrue, " he wrote. "I finally confessed to the crimes that I am not guilty of when I was stripped naked and pliers were placed on my testicles."

He was then jailed in Kota, where he waited more than a year before his trial. A number of intermittent hearings followed over the next 12 months . . . all in Hindi which the family later paid to have transcribed . . . before Malluzzo was sentenced in July last year to 10 years for cannabis trafficking.

Malluzzo has contracted malaria in prison and is also suffering from other health problems. "But we're most worried about his depression, " says his mother, who lives in Dartford, Kent.

"We've sought an appeal of his case but this could take a number of years. We don't want our son to give up hope because we are fighting for justice for him from the outside. We will never give up."

Another of her son's letters reads: "I'm sick of it. Hot, squashed in like sardines, lying about on a stone floor, men sweating, burping, farting, shitting, puking, spitting tobacco, pissing in front of me all day long. What if I'm not free? I don't feel like fighting anymore."

Teresa has not visited the prison at her son's request but her husband has travelled over on a number of occasions. She last spoke to Patrick shortly before his arrest when he phoned on her birthday. "He said 'happy birthday' and then told me he loved me. The last words he said to me were, 'I'll see you when I get home and take you out for dinner.'" The Malluzzo family have been in touch with Fianna Fail TD for Carlow-Kilkenny John McGuinness and hope to meet with Bertie Ahern in the coming weeks. "I'd love to meet the Taoiseach. We're trying to arrange that at the moment, " Teresa told the Sunday Tribune. "We have a petition with thousands of signatures on it. I don't think the Taoiseach will refuse to meet us. We're looking for him to personally intervene and want to present him with the petition."

The Malluzzo family believe political intervention by the Irish government may speed up the appeal process and ensure their son gets a fair trial outside the region of Rajasthan. The charity Fair Trials Abroad has been campaigning for Malluzzo's release and says that the Irish government can intervene on the basis that his human rights have been breached.

"We have no life because of this and we'll keep campaigning until he is free, " said Teresa. "We don't mind about selling our house, it's just a place to live. What's more important is to get Patrick home."