The hot sun as usual drove Peter and his friends out of the bushes in the Manso area and into town to buy food.

Lunchtime for the small-scale miners had arrived. It was the return journey back to work after lunch that changed his life.

He told Luv FM's Nana Yaw Gyimah, they found a mobile phone on the ground. Peter Takpondo remembers he called a contact on the phone to inform her that he had found a phone.

According to him, he gave out his location and found police officers in his house the next day with the woman he had spoken to. He was accused of stealing the phone and whisked away into the darkness of a remand cell.

Peter has been there for three years without an end to his trial until some judges on the Justice for All Programme entered the prison to hear his story.

He was let go last Friday, July 27, 2018 to regain a freedom he says was denied him unjustly. Wearing a white shirt on his black trousers, the 25-year old weighed in on his wasted years.

"I am late in all spheres of life", Peter Takpondo told the reporter.

He dropped out of Duayaw Nkwanta Senior High School in the Brong Ahafo region after his struggling mother could no longer pay the fees. His father had passed years before.

In his early 20's, he moved from consumer to provider, leaving school to find work. According to him, he was working in the mines to raise money to go back to school until his ordeal put him in remand cells.

'I have to start all over again', he said before he was whisked away to complete some forms to officially relaunch his life after the state wasted three years of it.