UN experts say Jagtar Singh Johal's detention is psychological torture

Who: Ten United Nations human rights experts: the Special Rapporteurs on torture, on freedom of religion or belief, on minority issues, on human rights while countering terrorism, on freedom of opinion and expression and on human rights defenders, plus four members of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The subject was Jagtar Singh Johal, a British Sikh from Dumbarton in Scotland, held in India since his arrest on 4 November 2017.

What: In a statement issued on Wednesday 22 April 2026 (Reprieve posted it on 23 April), the experts urged India to drop the remaining charges and release Johal without delay. They said eight and a half years of detention without a clear path to trial is "unlawful suffering" and that the prolonged uncertainty alone is a form of psychological torture. They spoke of a "profound miscarriage of justice" and raised double jeopardy and presumption of innocence concerns, because the cases then pending against him, brought by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), rest on the same alleged confession. Reprieve and REDRESS count eight such cases; The Tribune counted seven in March 2025. Johal says he signed it after police gave him electric shocks and threatened to burn him alive. Indian authorities have denied the torture claim and say due process is being followed. The experts said they would keep monitoring the case.

Where: The UN human rights system; Johal was held in Delhi, and later walked out of Tihar Jail. His one acquittal came from a court in Moga, Punjab.

Why it mattered: A full acquittal had not freed him. In early March 2025 a Moga court acquitted Johal in a 2016 case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) that accused him of terror funding, because the prosecution had not proved its case beyond doubt; Reprieve reports the court said prosecutors had "miserably failed". He stayed in custody on the NIA cases. The UN statement gave that gap a name: detention without trial, resting on a confession alleged to have been obtained by torture, can itself amount to torture. The case then moved. On 18 September 2026 the Delhi High Court (Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja) granted him bail in seven NIA cases (REDRESS: the remaining cases where bail had not already been granted), holding that the UAPA's bail restriction does not override the right to a speedy trial when imprisonment has no realistic end; about 40 witnesses had been examined and 123 remained. Johal left Tihar Jail on 1 October 2026 after his family filed a habeas corpus petition. Bail is not acquittal: he remains an accused, had to surrender his passport and is barred from public statements about the case.