Detention of Jagtar Singh Johal

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) on securing this hugely important debate.

Jagtar Singh Johal, a British citizen and a Sikh human rights advocate from Dunbartonshire, sought to use his platform to raise awareness of historical abuses carried out against the Sikh population. In 2017, he travelled to India to get married, and three weeks after the ceremony plain-clothes police officers abducted him on the street. According to the human rights organisation Reprieve, the police brutally tortured Jagtar with electricity and brought petrol into his cell, threatening to burn him alive. To make the pain stop, he signed blank pieces of paper and recorded video statements confessing to the charges against him, some of which carried the death penalty.

Jagtar’s imprisonment clearly amounts to arbitrary detention under international law. He has now been detained for more than three years without trial. When a British national is arbitrarily detained and tortured and faces a potential death sentence, all on the basis of trumped-up political charges, the British Government must make it clear that that is unacceptable. Despite it being Government policy to lobby for the release of arbitrarily detained UK nationals overseas, the Foreign Secretary has yet to do so for Jagtar.

Will the Minister explain why the Government failed to implement its policy to seek the release of arbitrarily detained British citizens in Jagtar’s case? This is even more urgent after a mass outbreak of covid-19 in the prison in which Jagtar is detained. The World Health Organisation and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have called on states to protect vulnerable prisoners during the pandemic, to immediately release those who have been arbitrarily detained and to secure non-custodial alternatives to detention.

In April, I wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to raise Jagtar’s case during a meeting with his counterpart, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government raised Jagtar’s arbitrary detention with the Indian authorities, either at that meeting or at any other time?

Although the UK Government are anxious to improve relations with India so they can secure a post-Brexit trade deal, the UK-India relationship, and indeed all our diplomatic efforts, must be deeper than just trade. They should be based on the promotion of democracy, human rights and upholding international law. The Government must do all they can to ensure Jagtar’s safety and release.