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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

Starmer urged to intervene in ‘rigged’ Indian prosecution of British human rights activist

Concerned family members, including children, hold a sheet of paper with a photograph of human rights activist Jagtar Singh Johal, accompanied by text explaining his situation
Members of the Free Jaggi Now campaign, en route to handing in a petition to 10 Downing Street in 2022. Dumbarton resident Jagtar Singh Johal was in Punjab for his wedding in 2017 when his family say he was bundled into an unmarked car. Photograph: James Manning/PA

Four senior lawyers, including the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, have written to Keir Starmer urging him to request that Indian prosecutors drop charges against the British national Jagtar Singh Johal on the basis that continued prosecution would be in manifest breach of the double jeopardy rule which prevents someone being tried twice for the same offence.

Johal has been held in an Indian jail for eight years, and in March last year was acquitted of the terrorist charges laid against him in a court in Punjab. The court found the prosecutors had “miserably failed” to present any reliable evidence, despite having had seven years to do so.

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