British Sikh national Jagtar Singh Johal was released from Tihar Jail on Thursday after the Delhi High Court granted him bail in seven cases under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The court noted that Johal had spent more than eight years in custody and that the trial was unlikely to conclude soon.
Johal, who had been lodged in Jail No. 5, exited through Gate No. 4 following the court’s order. A bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja observed that, despite directions from the Supreme Court, the pace of the trial had not accelerated.
The investigations, conducted by the National Investigation Agency, relate to a series of alleged targeted killings and attempted killings in Punjab’s Ludhiana and Jalandhar districts during 2016‑17. Two of the cases involve the killing of Shri Hindu Takhat president Amit Sharma in Ludhiana in January 2017 and the alleged attempted murder of RSS leader Jagdish Kumar Gagneja in Jalandhar in August 2016.
Johal was arrested in 2017 and has been accused by the NIA of being an active member of the Khalistan Liberation Force. The NIA argued that, as a foreign national, he was a flight risk, but the high court held that liberty could not be curtailed solely on that basis. The court ordered him to post a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh with two sureties of the same amount, surrender his passport, supply contact details to the investigating officer and report to the officer every fortnight. He must cooperate with the trial and is prohibited from joining social media or WhatsApp groups that circulate anti‑national material.
