- Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Gurpreet Singh Johal, a lawyer and Labour councillor, has written to Cameron urging him to meet the family and seek relief for his brother.
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE brother of blogger Jagtar Singh Johal, who has been detained in an Indian jail for more than six years now, has expressed hope that the new foreign secretary, David Cameron, would succeed in securing his release.
Gurpreet Singh Johal felt Cameron, who recently made a dramatic comeback into frontline politics following the ouster of Suella Braverman as the home secretary, could use his “expertise and leverage” to give his brother relief.
Jagtar was reportedly arrested in the northern Indian state of Punjab in 2017 when he had gone there for his marriage. He was allegedly taken away in an unmarked vehicle. The Briton from Dumbarton, Scotland, later claimed that he has been tortured and faces death penalty over his activism and campaigning for Sikh human rights.
Gurpreet, a lawyer and Labour councillor, has written to Cameron urging him to meet the family and call for his brother’s release. The UK government has said that it was committed to seeing the case being settled.
The Johal family, however, feels that it has been let down by the UK government and is now banking on Cameron, who served as the prime minister between 2010 and 2016.
“It is extremely distressing to build up to meeting face to face with the foreign secretary, only for them to move on to a new job a few months later,” Gurpreet wrote to the foreign secretary.
“Each time a new foreign secretary has been appointed, I have had to start all over again. It is exhausting, but I will keep fighting to bring my brother home.”
Gurpreet also told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme that they are eager to see what the new foreign secretary does. He said Cameron has to meet them first to give an idea about his plan of action to bring his brother back home.
He added that prime minister Rishi Sunak has said that he is using Cameron’s experience and that is why he was brought back into the government. That gave them hope that the foreign secretary’s experience as the premier would allow him to secure Jagtar’s release, something his predecessors have failed to accomplish.
Gurpreet also said that “robust action” is required to bring back his brother and it is not just about “soft diplomacy”.
“The bottom line is my brother’s life depends on what David Cameron decides to do and whether he decides to call for Jagtar’s release to bring him back home,” he was quoted as saying.
Sunak raised the issue with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi when he visited India for the G20 summit in September and had said then that London is committed to seeing the case resolved at the earliest.
