The British Sikh activist Jagtar Singh Johal, detained for seven years in an Indian jail, has been placed into solitary confinement and under 24-hour surveillance despite being acquitted of all terrorism charges against him by a Punjab court on 4 March, his family have claimed.
Johal is still facing the exact same charges in a parallel case in a clear example of double jeopardy, his brother Gurpreet said when giving testimony at Westminster to an all party committee on arbitrary detention. He said the Indian courts have not granted his brother bail, despite the prosecutor’s failure to produce any credible evidence or witnesses in the Punjab court.
Gurpreet said UK consular staff met his brother in jail on Tuesday and were told he had been put into solitary confinement with a 24-hour guard, adding no explanation had been given. Gurpreet said: “I fear for his physical and mental welfare since he is being excluded from contact with all other prisoners. He has been in jail for seven years, acquitted and now he is being further punished. He is being mentally tortured and I am concerned something is going to happen to him. The aim is to break him.”
He added that a critical window of opportunity existed after the Punjab acquittal, in which the judge was damning about the quality of evidence assembled by the Indian prosecutors, to secure his brother’s release. He said the Foreign Office had to realise his brother was not being held to secure his conviction, but to keep him in detention. “What is missing from the British government is political will. I am told the prime minister raised the case when he met the Indian external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, but I do not know what exactly they are raising, or how central it is to the conversations ministers are having.”
He said that what the former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Patten has dismissed as “by the way diplomacy” is not enough to make India sense there will be consequences for the mistreatment of British nationals.
He said: “The current prime minister is an ex-prosecutor, the current foreign secretary is an ex-lawyer and both should be well apprised of what double jeopardy means and how this can be applied.”
Dan Dolan, the deputy executive director of legal NGO Reprieve, said double jeopardy protects people from being put on trial twice for the same crime and is enshrined in both international law and India’s constitution. Both Reprieve and Jagtar claim the eight other cases brought by the Indian National Investigative Agency are essentially duplicate cases, with no additional evidence provided, and all of the evidence is based on torture.
The Indian government denies torture has been used. The central allegation in all nine cases is that Jagtar transferred money to supposed co-conspirators, and that this was used to fund a series of attacks in Punjab between 2016 and 2017. The Indian authorities do not claim Jagtar was directly involved in any of these attacks.
David Lammy, who met Gurpreet in November has said he is willing to meet again but not for a further seven weeks, a timetable that according to Gurpreet completely fails to understand the urgency of the crisis. “The window of opportunity is narrow, and he needs to meet a lot sooner. It is urgent,” he said.
