Jagtar Singh Johal’s family say they have been unable to speak to him since he was transferred to Delhi’s notorious Tihar Jail.
The family of a Scot detained in India for more than eight years have revealed they have not spoken to him for seven months as politicians pile pressure on the UK Government to bring him home.
Jagtar Singh Johal, from Dumbarton, has now spent 3,146 days behind bars since he was arrested while on honeymoon in Punjab in 2017. His brother Gurpreet says the family’s phone calls were cut off after Johal was transferred to Delhi’s notorious Tihar Jail last year.
The family’s latest ordeal comes as more than 50 MPs and peers wrote to Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Thursday urging her to do “everything in your power” to bring Johal home, following a fresh intervention by ten United Nations experts who described his continued detention as a “profound miscarriage of justice”.
Responding to the intervention, Jagtar’s brother Gurpreet Singh Johal spoke of the personal toll the ordeal continues to have on the family. “It can get very lonely, campaigning for my brother to be set free,” he said.
“Since Jagtar was moved to Tihar jail last year, they stopped our phone calls – it’s been seven months since I had a call with him. Video calls were stopped long before that.
“Try to imagine how that feels, not being able to even talk to your brother, knowing he’s unfairly locked up.”
The cross-party letter follows a fresh intervention by ten United Nations Special Rapporteurs and independent experts, who have called on Indian authorities to drop all remaining charges against Johal and release him without delay.
In the letter to Cooper, parliamentarians said the latest UN findings highlighted the “egregious nature” of Johal’s continued imprisonment.
They wrote: “Jagtar has now spent 3,146 days in arbitrary detention, during which he has endured torture, severe abuse of his rights, and the continuing trauma of prolonged uncertainty.
“The intervention of senior UN experts makes clear that his continued imprisonment is unlawful, intolerable, and a profound miscarriage of justice.”
The UN experts said there was “no rationale” for Johal’s continued detention and warned that more than eight years in prison without a foreseeable end to proceedings amounted to “unlawful suffering”.
“Eight and a half years of arbitrary detention without a clear path to trial is not justice, it is unlawful suffering,” they said. “The prolonged uncertainty alone is a form of psychological torture.”
Johal was acquitted in one case in March 2025 after a court in Punjab rejected allegations against him. However, he remains imprisoned while facing a number of federal prosecutions that campaigners say are effectively duplicate cases.
The experts also raised concerns about “double jeopardy, the presumption of innocence, the misuse of counter-terrorism laws, and the integrity of the proceedings”, and called on the Indian government to release him immediately.
Signatories to the letter noted that Prime Minister Keir Starmer had previously recognised Johal’s detention as arbitrary and twice called for his release while leader of the opposition.
“As leader of the opposition, the Prime Minister rightly recognised Jagtar’s detention as arbitrary and twice called for his release. It has never been more vital to deliver this,” they wrote.
The letter was signed by MPs and peers from Labour, the Conservatives, the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Greens and independent benches, including Dumbarton MP Douglas McAllister.
Gurpreet said the MPs’ letter was a reminder both to ministers and the family that public support for Jagtar’s release remains strong.
“Stuff like this letter makes a difference. It reminds the Government that they’re on notice. And it reminds the family that people care – not just the MPs that signed but the thousands of voters who wrote to them.
“My message to the community is that we won’t rest until Jagtar is home.”
The Foreign Secretary raised Johal’s case during recent meetings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
The Record has contacted the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development office for comment.
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