Foreign Secretary asks for progress over Scot detained in India

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has told the BBC he wants to "see progress" in the legal case against a Scottish man detained in India since 2017.

Sikh activist Jagtar Singh Johal, 37, from Dumbarton, faces terror charges in connection with political violence in the north of India.

Speaking on a visit to New Delhi, Mr Lammy said he was raising the case with his Indian counterpart.

Mr Johal's family welcomed the intervention, but urged the new Labour government to go further and secure his release.

Mr Lammy criticised India's judicial process for moving "very slowly", but declined to call for Mr Johal’s release or say that he had been detained arbitrarily.

Previously, while Labour was in opposition at Westminster, Mr Lammy had written a number of social media posts about the case.

In June 2022 he wrote that Mr Johal had been in prison for 1,700 days "without due process".

He called for former prime minister Liz Truss to end the "arbitrary detention"and said "she must secure his release".

Later he wrote that Mr Johal had been detained "with no legal basis".

Mr Lammy, who was appointed foreign secretary less than three weeks ago, did not use the same language on his current visit to in India.

He said: "I am here as foreign secretary today. This is a serious issue that I have raised in the past and I am raising again.

"I can't go into detail about those issues.

"They are appropriately made in private, but it has been taking a long while so I pressed the Indian authorities again on this issue."

Mr Johal, 37, was arrested in November 2017, just weeks after his wedding, and later charged with conspiracy to murder.

His family says he was tortured into signing blank pieces of paper.

Mr Lammy is the seventh foreign secretary to be in post since Mr Johal's arrest.

He added: "We want to see progress and the judicial system take its course.

"He has been charged, there is a judicial system taking place, but it is moving very slowly."

Mr Lammy said it was important that Mr Johal had received consular access.

The case was also previously raised by Sir Keir Starmer, who wrote to Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2022 to express his concerns.

In his letter to Mr Johnson, Sir Keir wrote: "When a UK national has been so gravely mistreated, with no legal basis, the UK government must act decisively to negotiate their release."

Mr Johal's brother Gurpreet, a Labour councillor, welcomed Mr Lammy's move, but said there needed to be a solution to "bring Jagtar back home".

He said the family was "hopeful" of a breakthrough under the Labour government.

He added his brother was "as well as he can be" and kept in touch via a phone call every three weeks.

A cross-party group of MPs previously said that after arresting Mr Johal, "interrogators electrocuted him, and threatened to douse him in petrol and set him alight" before he signed blank pieces of paper to end the torture.

These allegations have been denied by the Indian authorities.

Mr Johal is facing eight charges of conspiracy to murder, linked to political violence in India.

His trial for the eight most serious cases against him started in 2022 but he still has not been convicted of any crime.

In May 2022, a UN panel of human rights experts found his detention was arbitrary and he should be released.

The High Commission of India in London - which has been approached for comment - has said "due process" under Indian law is being followed in the case.