BIJNOR: Dressed in a pair of track pants and wrapped in a white shawl, 43-year-old Bijnor man Bala Singh stood awkwardly before photographers as he stepped out of the district jail on Friday morning, having spent 10 years in jail for a crime that his brother Pappu had committed. "I wasted a decade of my youth in prison just because I did not have any official document to prove that I am not my brother," he said.Police sources said that four persons, including Pappu, were booked for the murder of Dharampal, a resident of Sabudala village, in 2001. Cops managed to arrest the other three accused, but Pappu remained elusive. After successive raps by the court for inaction and shoddy probe into the case, police finally picked Bala on April 30, 2006 and produced him in the court as Pappu. Bala had been in jail since then. Explaining the delay in justice for Bala, district jail superintendent DC Mishra said, "We had the fingerprints of Pappu from an earlier case. We then sent them along with Bala's to a forensic laboratory in Lucknow last year to see if they were indeed of two different men. The lab confirmed to us that Bala could not have been Pappu." No one, however, has been able to explain why it took cops nine years to send Pappu and Bala's fingerprints for verification if they always had it with them in the first place.On his part, Bala, though relieved, is a bitter man. "I finally got justice, but I lost the prime years of my life. Ten years ago, I was a young man full of hopes. I have aged now. All my dreams have been shattered. I was innocent and spending days and nights inside a prison has been harrowing for me. At times I almost gave up hope," Bala wept.Residents of Sahuwala, under Raipur Sadat police station here, Bala's family lives in a small makeshift house. Working as a labourer, his mother Rajkumari, 66, ran from pillar-to-post to gather money for a lawyer who'd fight her innocent son's case. She finally got one, Komal Singh, a couple of years back."We live hand-to-mouth. Where would money come for a lawyer," Rajkumari said. "Police official RK Singh, a station house officer at the time, came to our house and took Bala away... While he languished in jail, Pappu fled to Nepal, where he was murdered. I even submitted a death certificate but cops refused to listen to me." Rajkumari alleged that cops threatened them to keep quiet when they arrested Bala under pressure from the court to find the real murder accused . After their lawyer's intervention, the court ordered Bala's fingerprint to be matched with those of his brother. Bala said he had just one wish left. "I want the official who had arrested me to be punished."