UK PM Rishi Sunak Urged to Secure Release of British Man Held in India – News18

A group of British MPs are calling on UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to intervene in the case of a British man who is imprisoned in India, a BBC report said on Wednesday. More than 70 MPs signed a letter urging the Indian-origin British PM to call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “immediately release” Jagtar Singh Johal when he travels to New Delhi for the G20 leaders’ summit this week.

This letter comes as 34-year-old Johal’s case has attracted widespread attention in India and the UK. It has also been raised in the British Parliament and the European Parliament. His family alleges that Johal, who is a resident of Dumbarton, Scotland, has been “arbitrarily detained” for more than five years.

Who is Jagtar Singh Johal?

According to his family, Jagtar Singh Johal was an online activist and documented the alleged persecution of the Sikhs. His activities consisted of translating into English the stories in a magazine and website.

Johal has been lodged in prison since 2017 and is being probed by India’s National Investigation Agency over links to targeted killings carried out by the banned Khalistani Liberation Force (KLF).

He is facing charges of conspiracy to murder, being a member of a terrorist gang, and waging war against India. These charges carry a maximum sentence of death.

What British MPs said

Tory MP David Davis told the BBC that “the first duty of a state should be to prevent a citizen getting harmed”, and that if a citizen had been harmed and subjected to injustice, “the government should be raising the most serious protests”.

“That does not seem to be happening at the moment and that is a failure of the Foreign Office to do its most fundamental duty,” he added.

In their letter, the MPs say that “upon his arrest, Jagtar’s interrogators electrocuted him, and threatened to douse him in petrol and set him alight. To make the torture stop, Jagtar recorded video statements and signed blank pieces of paper.”

More about arrest

Johal arrived in India in October 2017 and got married to a Punjabi woman. His brother Gurpreet Singh Johal and his parents flew back to the UK after the marriage, while Jaggi chose to stay back. In November, he was arrested from Jalandhar by Punjab Police. Ever since his detention, Jaggi Johal’s British family has been lobbying for his release. Johal now remains in prison in India.

His brother Gurpreet Singh Johal, a lawyer and Labour councillor in Dumbarton, told the BBC that “both former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Theresa May had discussed the case with India’s Prime Minister, and said, ‘it would be very difficult for Rishi Sunak not to raise the case… if Rishi Sunak doesn’t, the question will be ‘why didn’t you?’

“Given Rishi Sunak has a good relationship with the Indian Prime Minister, it shouldn’t be a hard ask,” he said.