The families of other arbitrarily detained Britons have written to the Prime Minister, urging him to seek human rights activist Jagtar Singh Johal’s release on his trip to India this week.
“In almost eight years and hundreds of court hearings, prosecutors have supplied no credible evidence against Jagtar,” they wrote. “In the first case against him to reach a verdict, in March 2025, Jagtar was acquitted of all charges by the Moga district court in Punjab. The court found the prosecution had ‘miserably failed’ to prove its case and rejected all the allegations against him”.
“The eight essentially duplicate cases against Jagtar violate the ‘double jeopardy’ principle that protects people from being put on trial more than once for the same crime, enshrined in both international and Indian law.”
The letter was signed by Mona and Sanaa Seif, sisters of Alaa Abd el-Fattah; Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe; her husband, Richard Ratcliffe; Matthew Hedges and his partner, Daniela Tejada. Abd el-Fattah’s cousin Omar Robert Hamilton, one of the lead coordinators of the Free Alaa campaign, is also a signatory.
“India’s National Investigation Agency courts often take decades to reach a verdict. As we know from painful experience, the mental torture of being arbitrarily detained with no end in sight can cause extreme suffering,” they wrote.
“We urge you to use your first visit to India as prime minister to make clear to Prime Minister Modi that allied countries do not treat each other’s citizens this way, and that what happens to Jagtar will have long-lasting consequences, both for India’s reputation on the international stage, and the future of its relations with the UK.”
