After learning that the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was to visit the Indian Prime Minister and her counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in Delhi, we worked with MPs, family members and journalists at the Press Association to raise the case of our client, Sikh human rights activist Jagtar Singh Johal, who has been imprisoned since 2017.
Jagtar, when told of the Foreign Secretary’s planned visit by consular staff, sent her a message directly, saying that he was “stuck in a broken country with a broken judicial system.”
The story, published by the Press Association, made it into national and local outlets including the Independent, Evening Standard and Yahoo news. It also included quotes from Jagtar’s MP, Douglas McAllister, and our Deputy Director, Dan Dolan, who said that: “An Indian court last year acquitted Jagtar on all charges, for lack of evidence, but he remains detained due to eight zombie cases based on the same allegation and the same torture confession. This kind of double jeopardy is prohibited in India’s constitution and international law. As UN legal experts recently communicated to the Indian authorities, the only just resolution is for the charges to be dropped and Jagtar released immediately. It’s past time for the Foreign Secretary to negotiate with her Indian counterparts and get this done.” The full Press Association piece is available here.
The Foreign Secretary was approached for comment by a journalist travelling with her, and she responded calling the continued detention of Jagtar “deeply distressing”, and urging a “swift resolution” to his case. She also confirmed she had raised the issue during meetings with Indian Prime Minister Modi and External Affairs Minister Jaishankar. The Press Association wrote a follow-up piece on her comments, available here, and the story was also the focus of a broadcast segment on STV which you can watch here.
Jagtar’s brother Gurpreet welcomed the Foreign Secretary’s comments, saying: “words can’t describe how distressing it is to have your husband abducted by police on your honeymoon, or to have a son or a brother taken away. But reading these latest comments, it feels like the message has finally got through. Jagtar’s imprisonment is a terrible injustice, a British family is suffering, and the UK Government absolutely has to do something about it. What matters isn’t what the Foreign Secretary says to journalists; it’s what she said to Prime Minister Modi and Dr Jaishankar when she had the opportunity, and what she is doing behind the scenes to get Jagtar home. She’ll be judged on actions, not words.” Gurpreet’s response was then covered in this piece by the Daily Record.
