Indian Government Must End the Injustice in Jagtar Singh Johal Case

British human rights activist Jagtar Singh Johal has been cleared of all charges in a case in Punjab, after a court dismissed the accusations made by Indian authorities, finding that the prosecution had failed to provide credible evidence linking him to a terrorist conspiracy.

Despite his acquittal, Jagtar, who has already served seven years in an Indian jail, will not be freed, as he faces eight additional cases filed by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), all based on the same “confession” that was allegedly extracted under torture. In a letter to his lawyer, Jagtar revealed that he was forced to sign his name on a blank sheet of paper after enduring electric shocks and threats of being set on fire with petrol brought into his cell. After analysing the letter, medical experts concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe he had been tortured.

All nine cases, including the one in which he was acquitted today, are related to assaults on Hindu leaders in Punjab in 2016 and 2017. The Indian authorities do not claim that Jagtar was directly involved in these attacks but accuse him of transferring funds to support them.

That allegation has now been rejected by the court in Punjab in this case, as prosecutors failed to present any reliable evidence to back it up, despite having had over seven years to develop their case. The NIA prosecutors were severely criticised in the verdict for having “failed to collect cogent and convincing evidence during investigation regarding participation of the accused in unlawful activities”, and having “miserably failed to prove” the commission of the various alleged offences.

Reacting to the verdict, REDRESS Director, Rupert Skilbeck, said:

“Rather than prolonging this injustice, the Indian government is obliged to investigate these serious torture claims, which have been found credible by medical experts. Evidence obtained through torture cannot be used in court, making these allegations all the more grave. The Indian government should review how the law allows such evidence to be used in court. The UK must escalate its pressure on India to secure Jagtar’s release.”

According to Reprieve, which has been providing legal assistance to Jagtar’s family in the UK, alongside REDRESS, Prosecutors in the Moga case submitted testimony from:

Jagtar himself, he signed a blank piece of paper after police tortured him with electricity and brought petrol into the cell and threatened to burn him alive
His co-accused: who subsequently retracted the testimony and who later died in suspicious circumstances in police custody
One witness who retracted his statement in court and testified that police also made him sign a blank piece of paper
Two witnesses (who were repeatedly summoned and failed to appear) produced statements which were almost identical – they appeared to have been copied and pasted. Prosecutors later stated that one of these men is dead. The other did eventually testify. Under cross-examination, his testimony was exposed as inconsistent, and it was revealed that he himself had been arrested by police on terrorism charges multiple times and had a strong motive to testify against Jagtar in return for lenient treatment.

More information about the case

Jagtar Singh Johal is a blogger from Dumbarton, Scotland, who drew attention to human rights abuses against the Sikh community in India. He was abducted off a street in India on 4 November 2017, while visiting India to get married. He was hooded and forced into a police car by officials in plain clothes, who did not have an arrest warrant.

In 2021, UN human rights experts concluded that the continued pre-trial detention of Jagtar lacked legal basis and was arbitrary. They also found that the appropriate remedy would be to release him immediately. In 2023, India’s Supreme Court judges ruled that keeping him incarcerated despite a lack of admissible evidence violates his fundamental rights under India’s constitution. However, Jagtar was not released, as the bail ruling applied only to one of the nine nearly identical cases against him.

Following the publication of a report by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s intelligence watchdog, on 5 March 2020, Reprieve investigators uncovered information which suggested that in 2017, a UK Government minister may have authorised MI5 and MI6 to share information about a UK citizen that led to his arrest and torture in India.

In August 2022, Jagtar’s legal team at Leigh Day filed a legal claim, supported by REDRESS and Reprieve, which argued that MI5 and MI6 may have contributed to Jagtar’s detention and torture by sharing intelligence with the Indian authorities, when there was a real risk that Jagtar could be tortured, mistreated, or face the death penalty.