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Jagtar Singh Johal, the British-Sikh human rights activist acused of terrorism has been acquitted on all charges in a case in Punjab, after a court rejected the allegations against him made by Indian authorities.
Johal has been held in detention for seven years awaiting judgment, but must remain in prison since he is facing eight essentially duplicate cases brought by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) based on the same alleged confession.
The ruling is likely to lead to renewed pressure on the UK Foreign Office to secure his release on the basis that a court, after exhaustive investigation, has been unable to compile any credible evidence against him.
Johal’s lawyers allege he was forced to sign his name on a blank piece of paper after police tortured him with electricity and brought petrol into the cell and threatened to burn him alive. He faces the threat of the death penalty in the eight duplicate cases against him.
The central allegation in all nine cases is that Johal transferred money to supposed co-conspirators, and that this was used to fund a series of attacks in Punjab in 2016-17. The Indian authorities do not claim Johal was directly involved in any of these attacks.
Reprieve, the organisation that represented him during the case, said the “prosecutors supplied no credible evidence to support it, over seven years and almost 150 court hearings. NIA prosecutors have also had seven years to build a case, and have produced no physical evidence, no email trail, no CCTV footage, no record of a bank transfer, no notes or recordings of telephone calls.”
Johal’s brother Gurpreet Singh Johal said: “We’ve always said the allegations against Jagtar are baseless, and now the court in Punjab has agreed, the whole case against him has been exposed as a fabrication. This demolishes the eight NIA cases – there’s nothing left. … Surely, the UK government recognises that this injustice cannot continue?”
Johal’s MP, Douglas McAllister, said: “The government must act now to secure Jagtar’s release. This is a unique opportunity to secure a resolution with the Indian authorities and bring this young British man back to his family in Dumbarton. Without decisive diplomatic action, he faces being imprisoned for decades while the remaining trials drag on, despite the complete lack of credible evidence against him.”
Dan Dolan, Reprieve’s executive director, said: “For Jagtar to remain imprisoned and facing a death sentence after this acquittal would be a mockery of justice. The eight essentially duplicate cases against him flagrantly violate the ‘double jeopardy’ principle, which protects people from being put on trial twice for the same crime and is enshrined in both international and Indian law. The remaining cases against him should be dropped, and Jagtar set free.”
