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The sisters of the British-Egyptian human rights campaigner Alaa Abd el-Fattah have intervened for the first time since his release from prison in Egypt to call on Keir Starmer to push Narendra Modi to free a British Sikh activist when he meets the Indian prime minister next week.
Jagtar Singh Johal, from Dumbarton, has been held in an Indian jail for nearly eight years without facing full trial in what his supporters say is an arbitrary and egregious denial of justice by a British ally.
Mona and Sanaa Seif – sisters of Abd el-Fattah, who was released from a Cairo jail a fortnight ago after years of campaigning – have joined forces with other victims of arbitrary detention to urge Starmer to warn the Indian prime minister that the continued mistreatment of Johal will have “long-lasting consequences” for the British-Indian bilateral relationship.
Johal, from Dumbarton, was in India to get married when he was seized by plainclothes officers in 2017. He has not been convicted of any crime and in March was cleared in one of nine cases against him. He faces terrorism charges in connection with attacks by the Sikh separatist Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), a banned terrorist organisation, of which he is alleged to be a member.
Johal’s detention is seen as one of the worst examples of injustice among Britons still held abroad, and the suspicion has been that the pursuit of free trade and security deals with India, secured in May, slowed down British government efforts on his behalf.
In letters to Downing Street, the group write: “In almost eight years and hundreds of court hearings, prosecutors have supplied no credible evidence against Jagtar. In the first case against him to reach a verdict, in March 2025, Jagtar was acquitted of all charges by the Moga district court in Punjab. The court found the prosecution had ‘miserably failed’ to prove its case and rejected all the allegations against him”.
They add: “The eight essentially duplicate cases against Jagtar violate the ‘double jeopardy’ principle that protects people from being put on trial more than once for the same crime, enshrined in both international and Indian law.”
The letter to Starmer has been signed by other victims of arbitrary detention including the British Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe; her husband, Richard Ratcliffe; Matthew Hedges, a British academic formerly held in the United Arab Emirates; and his partner, Daniela Tejada. Abd el-Fattah’s cousin Omar Robert Hamilton, one of the lead coordinators of the Free Alaa campaign, is also a signatory.
In the letter, coordinated by the campaign group Redress, they say they are “deeply concerned” by Johal’s continued detention and ask the prime minister to raise the case with a renewed urgency when he travels to India for the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai. They say Johal has been facing a possible death sentence after charges were brought against him principally on the basis of a confession extracted under torture.
“India’s National Investigation Agency courts often take decades to reach a verdict. As we know from painful experience, the mental torture of being arbitrarily detained with no end in sight can cause extreme suffering,” they write.
Following his acquittal in the first case against him, Johal’s prison conditions have worsened, it is understood. He is held in almost total solitary confinement and subjected to regular searches of his cell.
The letter says: “We urge you to use your first visit to India as prime minister to make clear to Prime Minister Modi that allied countries do not treat each other’s citizens this way, and that what happens to Jagtar will have long-lasting consequences, both for India’s reputation on the international stage, and the future of its relations with the UK.”
Starmer raised the Johal case with Modi during his visit to London in the summer, but, the letter says, “raising the case is not enough. Ministers in the previous government claimed to have raised Jagtar’s case more than 100 times with their Indian counterparts, but he remains in prison and it’s hard to see that any progress was made as a result of these interventions.”
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Mona and Sanaa Seif say only repeated intervention at the highest level makes a difference in such cases. Starmer and the UK national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, repeatedly raised Abd el-Fattah’s case with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.
Indian authorities do not claim that Johal was directly involved in alleged assaults on Hindu leaders in the Punjab region in 2016 and 2017, but instead accuse him of transferring funds to support them.
That allegation was rejected in court as Indian prosecutors failed to present any reliable evidence to back it up despite having had more than seven years to build a case.
National Investigation Agency 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.
Critics of the Indian legal system point out that there is “no CCTV footage, no bank transfer records, no email or phone call evidence” that directly links Johal to the crimes.
