By Tenzin Monlam

DHARAMSHALA, March 25: A Tibetan political prisoner has been released with serious back injuries sustained during his eight years imprisonment in Deyang prison in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.

Local Tibetans missed the opportunity to greet him on his arrival as Chinese authorities made sure by secretly dropping Ngoega, 61, at his home in Sershul County in Kardze in the traditional Tibetan province of Kham, according to RFA. “However, hundreds of Tibetans in Kardze are now pouring in to welcome Ngoega with continuous receptions,” a Tibetan monk living in South India, Pema Wangyal, told RFA.

Wangyal added that the 61-year old could ‘barely move without assistance’ owing to the back injuries.

Ngoega was arrested during the pan-Tibet 2008 unrest on suspicion of leading a protest in Sershul County challenging Beijing’s rule in Tibet.

“They held him at the Kardze county detention center and in Dhartsedo for a couple of weeks before he was sentenced by the Kardze Intermediate People’s Court on Oct. 30, 2008 to an eight-year term in prison,” Wangyal said.

In 1990, Ngoega had distributed religious scriptures and photos of the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, reviled by China as a “separatist” to local monasteries and the general public. Ngoega was among the principal organizers of a long-life prayer offering (Tenshug) to the Tibetan leader in Kardze in 2001. Chinese police reportedly found 70 pictures of the Tibetan leader during a raid on his home in 2008.