A group of around 100 cross-party British parliamentarians have signed a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, ahead of his planned visit to India to attend the G20 summit this weekend, to urge him to raise the issue of a Scottish Sikh man’s detention in the country during talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Jagtar Singh Johal, a 36-year-old British citizen from Dumbarton in Scotland, was arrested while in Punjab for his wedding in 2017 and is currently being held at a Delhi jail. Johal and his UK-based family have alleged that he was subjected to torture and mistreatment, allegations which the Indian authorities have denied and maintained that he was arrested on “serious charges” to face justice before the courts.
“The summit is a vital opportunity to secure the release of Jagtar Singh Johal, a British national arbitrarily detained in India for over five years,” reads the letter initiated by Martin Docherty Hughes, Johal’s local Dumbarton MP from the Scottish National Party (SNP).
“We urge you to call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to immediately release Jagtar from detention, so he can be reunited with his family in Dumbarton,” it reads.
UK-based human rights organisation Reprieve has also been supporting Johal through the course of his detention and launched an online petition backing the cross-party call for Sunak to raise the matter in his talks with Modi.
{{/usCountry}}UK-based human rights organisation Reprieve has also been supporting Johal through the course of his detention and launched an online petition backing the cross-party call for Sunak to raise the matter in his talks with Modi.
{{/usCountry}}Downing Street has not commented on whether Sunak intends to raise this issue during talks with his Indian counterpart later this week. His predecessors, Boris Johnson and Theresa May, had reportedly raised the matter with the Indian authorities during their visits to the country.
Johal faces nine charges in India including conspiracy to murder, which carries a death sentence.